How can teams prevent situations like Marner & Laine?

Eat The Rich

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Jun 17, 2017
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go back to the old CBA

I wouldn't go to that extreme, but it's clear that something will have to change fundamentally. Young players are starting to want experienced player money, and are we to expect experienced players to suddenly be happy with a paycut to facilitate the young stars? Hell no. This is just the beginning stages of a larger problem with the Salary Cap structure. It was put into place when it was normal for young guys to take smaller 2nd contracts and cash in during UFA prime years.
 

TheBloodyNine

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San Jose didn't need Erik Karlsson either but here we are.

This is irrelevant. If you have a chance to add elite talent you do so.

And when you build teams like that you get yourself into the same situation the leafs are in. Even after they sign marner their defense will still be suspect. They didn't need Tavares. They needed money to sign Marner and to improve their defense.
 
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viper0220

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Oct 10, 2008
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paying young players good money for their prime/peak years?

the question should be how do we prevent teams from the contracts like Lucic, Eriksson, Ladd, etc.

OP, this is the answer to your question. There are several stupid answers in this thread.

The days of overpaying old washed up UFA's going for their retirement contract are gone(as a Flames fan, I can relate to this because our current GM has done this), now you have to pay for your top RFA's because that where the money, the young players are better than ever, so you have to pay them, they are the one that are going to help you win, not Lucic, Eriksson, Ladd, etc.
 

viper0220

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Oct 10, 2008
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Let them walk. If they wanted to play hockey and be on a winning team then it wouldn't be about them. Marner unfortunately would be getting paid if the leafs didn't overpay multiple players.
Laine is thinking he's worth more then he actually is.

So you think the Flames should let Matthew Tkachuk walk? These players spend their whole live making it to this stage, so if a idiot GM cannot mange their cap properly, why should these players get the short end of it.
 

Eat The Rich

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Which is fine, but then you don't also complain that you can't sign some other guy because you paid the elite talent. Make the choice, live with the consequence.

When the other guy had no justification for trying to become the highest paid player on the team the story changes significantly.
 

viper0220

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Oct 10, 2008
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San Jose didn't need Erik Karlsson either but here we are.

This is irrelevant. If you have a chance to add elite talent you do so.

It depends on you teams needs. If you have a lot of "good players" at that position and than you sign that elite player. Now if you have several elite players and a elite talent comes available, than you sign that elite talent but you trade "good" players to fix your needs because you have that elite talent. In a cap world, this is not easy to do.
 

mjlee

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Feb 25, 2006
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You can do like some teams (Detroit) and have an informal internal cap. That is, no one got paid more than Lidstrom, that was the rule and everyone went along with it.
 

greasysnapper

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Apr 6, 2018
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I would do the reverse, and lower the UFA/RFA years. Raise the max contract, limit it to 5 years, allow players to walk earlier.

I don't think that's good for teams or the fans. It's a very NBA inspired idea. And it's one of the reasons why I think the NBA is so ridiculous despite being a really fun game to play and watch. 10-20 superstars basically control the entire league.
 

Martin Skoula

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Oct 18, 2017
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Which is fine, but then you don't also complain that you can't sign some other guy because you paid the elite talent. Make the choice, live with the consequence.

Not being able to pay the guy has nothing to do with us paying for other elite talent. The 10.5 set aside is more than reasonable and would be enough to sign a player with identical stats and reasonable representation.
 

Sanchise90

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Sep 6, 2019
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Dubas let this happen with the Nylander debacle and he’s set the precedent. He’s done a good job on most everything else but the Nylander and Matthews deals were not good value signings considering both were coming off entry level deals.

Nylander was a ***** and was rewarded for it. Marner will not get the best offer until 1 hour before the deadline unfortunately. If I were willing to go through this, I’d sit tight too.

If Dubas let Nylander sit for a year we wouldn’t be in this spot imo. Would never of happened with Lou.

To answer the question the only way to stop it is to let a player sit. Make an honest and fair offer then sit back and wait for them to accept or sit.

What? This logic is terrible. Just like players have a window of maximizing earnings, teams have a window of contention. You cannot give up a year of contention by having one of your best players sitting out the entire season.

Just using the Leafs as an example, if the Leafs let Marner sit an entire year, ok then what? Now you're worse on the ice, you've wasted a year of Tavares and the year after, not only do you have to figure out what to do with Marner, you have 3 defensemen to re-sign or find suitable replacements for. The impetus to make a deal falls on both sides.

These GMs have a lot on the line too and can't afford to lose a year of contention because they could not re-sign one of their star players.
 

Martin Skoula

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Oct 18, 2017
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According to you maybe. Clearly not according to those involved, or it would be done

According to literally every comparable that exists for a playmaking winger like Marner.

Asking to be the highest or 2nd highest paid winger in NHL history because you had one season over PPG is not reasonable.
 

Sanchise90

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I don't think that's good for teams or the fans. It's a very NBA inspired idea. And it's one of the reasons why I think the NBA is so ridiculous despite being a really fun game to play and watch. 10-20 superstars basically control the entire league.

While I agree with the idea of a contract structure similar to the NBA, there is no way small market teams would go for this. You think a team like Columbus after watching all their UFAs leave would sign up for a system where they have less control prior to UFA than now?
 

greasysnapper

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Apr 6, 2018
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While I agree with the idea of a contract structure similar to the NBA, there is no way small market teams would go for this. You think a team like Columbus after watching all their UFAs leave would sign up for a system where they have less control prior to UFA than now?

:nod:

Which is why I said in reply to that idea that, "I don't think that's good for teams"
 

Brownies

Registered User
By building their teams properly. The Leafs didn't need John Tavares.
I don't agree. In my opinion, John Tavares was a free asset so even if eventually they have to trade Marner or others to save money and increase their depth, the net result will look something like :

Leafs + Marner < Leafs + Tavares - Marner + player(s) received from Marner trade

Other scenarios are possible, obviously, but this is an exemple. Some might say that eventually, the decision to bring in Tavares will eventually leads to bad/difficult decisions to make and eventually bring the overall roster down, but I don't see it.
 
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Brownies

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I'll also add that I think that people are mistaking the Leafs position as a bad position, whether it should be seen as a difficult decision. Difficult because some tough decisions and negociations need to be made. My Habs don't have tough decisions to make right now because none of the good UFA were willing to sign here and we had a few terrible years of drafting.... Yeah ?
 

TheBloodyNine

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I don't agree. In my opinion, John Tavares was a free asset so even if eventually they have to trade Marner or others to save money and increase their dept, the net result will look something like :

Leafs + Marner < Leafs + Tavares - Marner + player(s) received from Marner trade

Other scenarios are possible, obviously, but this is an exemple. Some might say that eventually, the decision to bring in Tavares will eventually leads to bad/difficult decisions to make and eventually bring the overall roster down, but I don't see it.

It's already lead to difficult decisions. At the expense of their defense they chose to add an extraneous offensive player that lead them to the same seed and end playoff result that they had without him. The difference here is that if you trade Marner and keep Tavares, you're trading a guy who hasn't entered his prime and keeping a guy who will be out of his while Marner is squarely in his. It's not a good trade off.
 

Stubu

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With a bit of hindsight I wonder if Dubas could have signed all three with ultra aggressive offers at the time.

Matthews 11.5x8
Marner 10.5x8
Nylander 7x8

It's plausible. But the Tavares signing kind of out of the blue sort of threw a brand new spanner in their long-term budget planning. You mean extensions before that happened?
 

HSF

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Sep 3, 2008
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According to literally every comparable that exists for a playmaking winger like Marner.

Asking to be the highest or 2nd highest paid winger in NHL history because you had one season over PPG is not reasonable.
You have to look at cap percentage not cap hit
 

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