I just can't believe that.
No team, none, would let their superstar sign a deal DIRECTLY to UFA, because of the structure of the contract. If they were close, they make it work. When they do something as stupid as this, they have a Parise situation on their hands.
What benefit do they gain from pushing the signing. Let's go pro and con, and please anyone who can add anything to either column please do.
Pro
- Signed for the 2018-19 season
- Gives more time to hammer a contract out
- Avoids arbitration process
Con
- 1 year deal
- Signed directly to ufa
- Increase his stock to both the Sens and the league, making his cost more
- Pushes the problem a few months down the road
- More time to see how bad this team is, in a year they clearly aren't even attempting to be competitive. What did they expect to happen to show Stone they weren't a Mickey Mouse organization.
- Incident after incident
- A management group with a suspect, at best, track record with signings in charge. They couldn't make it work all summer, what's going to change?
- More time to weigh his options and come to terms with his UFA status, the longer he has this ability to weigh them the worse position for the Sens.
- Time to see what they intend to do with their other UFA's, doesn't seem promising.
I don't see any logic, whatsoever to pushing the signing. None.
To me, it seems like there were issues with signing bonuses and that Dorion was buying time with the 1 year deal. There had to be some sort of factor that would lead to a potential change, whether he was hoping for some sort of financing that wasn't available in the summer, a change of heart from Melnyk, a change in ownership. I have no idea. That's really the only thing that makes sense if there's any truth to both sides wanting to get something done, and both sides being close.
Because if both sides were supposedly so close, why couldn't they bridge the gap in the summer like every single other team manages to do when they are close with players? That's why I think it had to be signing bonuses.
People forget, but this entire long term extension has dragged out since the summer of 2017. Realistically, Stone should have been signed long term at that point since he had emerged as our best forward and was eligible for a long term extension. Even if Stone wanted to play out the year in an attempt to raise his value, there was probably a number that would have made him reconsider, and I'd imagine it was less than the 8-10 million AAV he's now going to get from somebody.
The lack of extension in 2017 will end up costly the Sens big time. Stone was bargaining from a position of being (on average) a 65 point player under a 75 million dollar salary cap to be (on average) an 88 point player under an 83 million dollar salary cap. Not to mention he's next in line to be the captain of this team, and the team is in a position of weakness having already traded their most popular player in Erik Karlsson. While Stone wanting to play out the season in 2017 mean he probably doesn't sign a 6M-6.5M type contract which would have been his market value at the time, maybe we could have gotten him for 7M. Now according to Garrioch, we're looking at something near 9 million. I would guess probably with greater signing bonuses and up front money than we would have paid in 2017.
The entire thing has been an epic failure that has exposed our organization for either being poorly run, or badly owned. We were either too incompetent to recognize how important Stone was in 2017, and then too incompetent to get a deal done before the 2018 arbitration - or our ownership handcuffed us to a point that a deal was impossible at either one of those times. It might be a combination of both.
I'd like someone show me a more botched contractual situation with a star player. We're acting like people who get payday loans. Everything is about kicking the can down the road and dealing with the big money later on, even if it will cost us significantly more in the mid term. It's either that, or our management completely failed to recognize that Stone's production in 2017 put him in a position to be underpaid based on what he was capable of.
Sure, it's possible Stone was asking for 8x8 or 9x8 in 2017, but it's not probable. Looking at contracts signed in that period, it would be realistic to expect us to be able to have gotten Stone for 7M or less. Huberdeau signed for 5.9, Marchand 6.1. Lucic, Ladd, and Okposo all also signed for 6 or under. While all those players aren't perfect on ice comparable players, they were all producing in a similar range and all but Huberdeau (who had 2 RFA years) were UFA contracts. (
Signings - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps) Looking at that, I assume we could have gotten Stone for 6-8 years, at much less than the 8-9 million with huge signing bonuses that it will now cost the team.
