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PredsV82

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Almost forgot we already had this thread.

Insane the number of top tier RFA players who are unsigned. I dont know if one of them will finally sign and they all will follow but hearing that these guys already have euro teams lined up to play for makes me think a lot of them wont be with their teams in October.

As much as we may think it's cool that Winnipeg and Colorado might suffer, I worry that if a bunch of these players hold out for a long time that will dramatically increase the likelihood of a lockout as owners will want to change things to prevent this.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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The owners have a bit of an opportunity here to try to rein things in on the RFA front. Despite all the players still unsigned, I'm not confident that they will though. But at least in theory, they could just let all those guys sit or go play in Europe or whatever. Try to reel things back in after a few of those RFA contracts the last couple of years inflated the market.

Hockey is such a team game, I'd be highly inclined to stick to my guns if I was in a GM seat. A lot of those teams already have their whole roster set up aside from their RFA, and a very fixed available amount of cap space remaining. If they can't come up with a contract that fits their cap constraints this late in the off-season, I don't see any point in further negotiations - let the guy sit. A few high profile players sitting out the entire season should help fix things.
 

OldFan

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Sadly I don't see it happening, someone will buckle.
Yes, someone will buckle. There are a few who will but tough minded GMs with a plan won’t. There are also a few who will consider offer sheets late in the game.
But not for Marner. Gms know not to mess with Toronto; they’ll get you someway in the long run. They run the league when they want to.
But that’s just my bias.
 

Viqsi

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Almost forgot we already had this thread.

Insane the number of top tier RFA players who are unsigned. I dont know if one of them will finally sign and they all will follow but hearing that these guys already have euro teams lined up to play for makes me think a lot of them wont be with their teams in October.

As much as we may think it's cool that Winnipeg and Colorado might suffer, I worry that if a bunch of these players hold out for a long time that will dramatically increase the likelihood of a lockout as owners will want to change things to prevent this.
...That is not news that I'd heard. Of course, I'm really only paying close attention to a single such case.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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Sadly I don't see it happening, someone will buckle.
There are so many of these RFAs that even if a couple GMs do buckle, there are going to be a bunch of other players who either sit out or accept compromise deals that fit the available cap space. It should still be a good opportunity to set some new precedents even if there are a few weak links in the chain.
 

Legionnaire11

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Fans should almost always side with the teams/owners in sports. As much as it would suck to lose say Josi after this season, he will be replaced many times over in our lifetime. But had we lost the Preds in 2007, that would have been it for the NHL in Nashville.

McDonald's, Wal-Mart... Screw them, pay the employees, pay benefits, treat people right. NHL... I want the healthiest league and healthiest team financially before worrying about the players.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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I'd rather side with the actual product in who should get more money.
He said "almost always"... which is relevant to the modern environment where the players are multimillionaires and the overall health of the game and markets is really what should matter more to fans than whether Player X gets an extra Lambo in the driveway or not. A few decades ago, it would have been a different story, of course.

The "working man" in this scenario is sitting out a whole year just because his team has only $8M left in their budget and he wants $10M (or rather, because his agent wants a 5% cut of that extra $2M).
 

Porter Stoutheart

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Didn’t ownership and players already agree on the split of the pie via lockout in order to protect the health of the game and markets?
Indeed... so we should support "rich" players asking for extra millions on top of their already huge salaries at the expense of the lower end "blue-collar" players?

And the effect on the health of the game and markets is not in the present tense snapshot... the CBA may expire this year or in 2 years... if there are contentious terms in the negotiations, it may lead to a labor dispute. And correspondingly to upsets to the health of the game and markets. And those may be accentuated by issues such as RFA holdouts. Or escrow, and balance of profits, etc, which is all related to these contractual issues.
 
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PredsV82

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Actually all we as fans should support is a message to both sides that they better not have another f***ing work stoppage. In 15 years we have lost 1 whole season and had another reduced to a mockery. Both sides need to suck it up, put on their big boy panties and keep playing while working on the next CBA
 

Porter Stoutheart

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At this point, if I was a GM with one of these "holdouts" I'd be highly tempted to set a hard deadline... like, the opening of Training Camp. Negotiations end once camp starts. If you aren't signed, see you next year.

Of course, that's crazy hard for them to actually do - especially teams who think they might be competing/contending like Tampa or Toronto. And almost all teams these days at least think they are competing to make the playoffs. But I'd applaud the GM who actually had the balls to take a hardline stand like that. (I predict none of them will, of course).

Hockey is such a team sport and success is based on so many things going right --- if all of these RFAs sat out, I bet half the teams would do just fine without them. Of course, the other half wouldn't, and those are the GMs who will take heat. Half the teams would have succeeded and half wouldn't have either way... just directing heat at the unsuccessful GM will be a lot easier when there is a big ticket holdout RFA to point to. Nobody wants to be that GM.
 

PredsV82

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I heard the XM guys saying that Toronto is screwed until October 1 on Marner because they cant take their LTIR players off the cap until then and so they wouldnt have the cap room to officially sign Marner in September.
 

Legionnaire11

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I don't really know about the other teams with outstanding RFA's, but I know Toronto is generally blamed for creating this situation and to me it's just poor management. You know that you've got a stable of young studs developed/developing and you will have to pay them... so instead of being responsible and planning your cap space accordingly, you go out and put a huge chunk of cap into Tavares.

Which I guess is fine, but then you need to move a player or two. And their defense is improved but will still be the obvious weakness of the team.

I think Pittsburgh has had it right, they identified the players they wanted to build around in Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Fleury, then effectively rotated through depth and made tough decisions on a lot of guys along the way, very much in the successful style of the New England Patriots. Toronto should have said "Okay, we've got Mathews, Marner, Reilly and Andersen" and worked on the depth around them instead of signing Tavares. They could have dealt Nylander along the way and used that Nylander and Tavares money to really put together a solid supporting cast.

It might still work out for them somehow, but to this point it's been a lot of hype and not really any results to show for it.
 

PredsHead

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At this point, if I was a GM with one of these "holdouts" I'd be highly tempted to set a hard deadline... like, the opening of Training Camp. Negotiations end once camp starts. If you aren't signed, see you next year.

Of course, that's crazy hard for them to actually do - especially teams who think they might be competing/contending like Tampa or Toronto. And almost all teams these days at least think they are competing to make the playoffs. But I'd applaud the GM who actually had the balls to take a hardline stand like that. (I predict none of them will, of course).

Hockey is such a team sport and success is based on so many things going right --- if all of these RFAs sat out, I bet half the teams would do just fine without them. Of course, the other half wouldn't, and those are the GMs who will take heat. Half the teams would have succeeded and half wouldn't have either way... just directing heat at the unsuccessful GM will be a lot easier when there is a big ticket holdout RFA to point to. Nobody wants to be that GM.

I think you are pretty close to what "old school" GMs think like in these situations. You negotiate up until a point, then you don't negotiate anymore. Once you get down to your best offer, you don't move from it and let the player decide if they want to accept the offer or to sit. The players have no leverage but withholding their services. I think that is what so many GMs had a problem with how Dubas handled Nylander, he met Nylander in the middle at the 11th hour instead of using what leverage he had to get the best deal for the team. All the other RFAs want to at least wait as long as they can to see if Dubas does the same thing with Marner. They don't want to sign for ~$8M per year for 5 years or more only to have Marner get $10M for 3 or something like that a few days later. I think all but the top handful of guys will be signed by the time camps start, but those last few guys could get interesting depending on what Marner does or gets from Toronto.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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I think you are pretty close to what "old school" GMs think like in these situations. You negotiate up until a point, then you don't negotiate anymore. Once you get down to your best offer, you don't move from it and let the player decide if they want to accept the offer or to sit. The players have no leverage but withholding their services. I think that is what so many GMs had a problem with how Dubas handled Nylander, he met Nylander in the middle at the 11th hour instead of using what leverage he had to get the best deal for the team. All the other RFAs want to at least wait as long as they can to see if Dubas does the same thing with Marner. They don't want to sign for ~$8M per year for 5 years or more only to have Marner get $10M for 3 or something like that a few days later. I think all but the top handful of guys will be signed by the time camps start, but those last few guys could get interesting depending on what Marner does or gets from Toronto.
Yeah, it seems like most teams have a very constrained and well-defined amount of cap space remaining for this year. It is too late to reasonably expect them to make additional moves to create more - that time came and went. Now the numbers they have are the numbers they have. There are only so many flavors of contract you can fit with an essentially fixed AAV number available. It shouldn't be that difficult to pick and choose amongst those finite options.

Granted a few, like Werenski in Columbus, Rantanen in Colorado, maybe Philly, aren't constrained like that. But a lot of the other big ones are - Toronto, Tampa, Boston, Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg probably are anyway. There's just not really any practical room to budge. That'd be a big factor for me in just taking an old-school hard deadline approach for those cases at least. I can give you a small number of contract variants that are going to fit - you choose whichever one you like best, Mr. Player.

And to me, I keep coming back to the idea that something like the Hertl contract might make the most sense in a lot of these RFA cases. Young players with their best years still ahead of them don't want 8-year terms at lower salaries, fair enough. Teams don't want to give young star players the Matthews 5-year term that leaves them UFA at the end, fair enough. So give them the 3- or 4-year term that leaves them RFA and load it so that their QOs are maxed out to something like the cap hits they wished they could have gotten on long-term deals. It's a band-aid. They don't get the same security. But they could have had it... could take an 8-year deal at $7M, if security mattered that much more to them and $7M was all the cap space available. But assuming the security isn't THAT important, then the Hertl-compromise is still the one I think many teams and players should consider. Same $7M AAV... but load it $5M-$7M-$9M on a 3-year term so that the player knows he is getting $9M on his next QO. Something like that. A better kind of "bridge" deal. Like Golden Gate Bridge Contracts.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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The recent trickle of additional signings of the extra UFAs and less-prominent RFAs is also tightening the noose on these big RFA's... fewer teams with any cap flexibility, fewer options for the affected teams to do anything but offer the AAV they have set aside.
 

Porter Stoutheart

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Looks like Werenski just got the "Golden Gate Bridge" style deal. With extra discount. Should see a few more of these this week!
 

Porter Stoutheart

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More of these Golden Gate bridge type deals going around... and some of them like Boeser, McAvoy, the aav are really incredibly low. It doesn't seem like the Marner megadeal really set any kind of precedent whatsoever. More like players are just caving with the start of the preseason.
 

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