Speculation: Matt Duchene

[Sens]

What would be Duchene's case for getting that sort of an AAV ? He's averaged 55 pts per 82 games the previous 4 seasons - seasons that would be expected to be his peak point producing years given that he's turning 28 this coming season - and spent chunks of those seasons playing on the wing.

Ryan O'Reilly is the exact same age as him, has scored 62 pts per 82 games over the same period, is 100% a centre, and one of the strongest two-way players in the game and he makes 7.5. And even with that, many people think of that as being not a great value. Other than being a former 3rd overall pick and having the lingering prestige that, for whatever reason, seems to stick to players as a result, what compelling argument could Duchene mount for being paid more than that?

“I’m a UFA in less then 12 months... if you don’t pay me one of the other 30GMs will”

“I just watched a 32 year old Stasney get 6.5 after a 53 point season”

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Name a team in a worse position than Ottawa.

Montréal and the Islanders are easy picks right now

 

[Ice-Tray]

There's absolutely nothing subjective about this team's record in 2018.

Personally I was talking about going forward. We're a better team than we showed last year, and not as good as our year before. Even with EK gone I don't think we'll be in the top 5 worst team next year.

We disagree about where the team is heading, which is fine. It's something that will play itself out over the course of next season and then we'll know.

 

[Uchiha]

No reason for him to stay in Ottawa long term. It was nice knowing you Matt.

 

[Wallet Inspector]

Montréal and the Islanders are easy picks right now

I like our prospect pool better than Montreal but the Habs' management actually spends money and doesn't sabotage.

Islanders have a better prospect pool than us and a superstar young forward in Barzal. Also Lou is a much better GM than Dorion.

And both teams have a 2019 first.

 

[Micklebot]

Personally I was talking about going forward. We're a better team than we showed last year, and not as good as our year before. Even with EK gone I don't think we'll be in the top 5 worst team next year.

We disagree about where the team is heading, which is fine. It's something that will play itself out over the course of next season and then we'll know.

We were a better team than we showed. Are we still a better team now tha Brassard Hoffman and maybe Karlsson and Ryan are gone?

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

What would be Duchene's case for getting that sort of an AAV ? He's averaged 55 pts per 82 games the previous 4 seasons - seasons that would be expected to be his peak point producing years given that he's turning 28 this coming season - and spent chunks of those seasons playing on the wing.

Ryan O'Reilly is the exact same age as him, has scored 62 pts per 82 games over the same period, is 100% a centre, and one of the strongest two-way players in the game and he makes 7.5. And even with that, many people think of that as being not a great value. Other than being a former 3rd overall pick and having the lingering prestige that, for whatever reason, seems to stick to players as a result, what compelling argument could Duchene mount for being paid more than that?

Now and Then is all I am going to give you on that. I called this press conference to tell you there are differences between Now and Then.. but I will not elaborate any more on that topic. Any questions?

 

[Sensung]

We were a better team than we showed. Are we still a better team now tha Brassard Hoffman and maybe Karlsson and Ryan are gone?

You don't really expect anything but pom-pom waving from Ice-Tray, right?

 

[danielpalfredsson]

What would be Duchene's case for getting that sort of an AAV ? He's averaged 55 pts per 82 games the previous 4 seasons - seasons that would be expected to be his peak point producing years given that he's turning 28 this coming season - and spent chunks of those seasons playing on the wing.

Ryan O'Reilly is the exact same age as him, has scored 62 pts per 82 games over the same period, is 100% a centre, and one of the strongest two-way players in the game and he makes 7.5. And even with that, many people think of that as being not a great value. Other than being a former 3rd overall pick and having the lingering prestige that, for whatever reason, seems to stick to players as a result, what compelling argument could Duchene mount for being paid more than that?

Ryan O'Reilly signed years ago. His cap hit percentage is 10.5, meaning the equivalent contract to O'Reilly's under a 79.5M cap would have an 8.3475M AAV. That's pretty much in line with what the other poster is suggesting when they say 8-9. I'd argue that the poster was a bit high with 9M, and the range is more 8M - 8.5M, I'll explain why below....

That's not even considering that O'Reilly's contract is structured in a way that almost all his salary is paid in signing bonuses. This likely gave the Sabres a slight discount on O'Reilly's AAV since players typically settle for a bit less for that sort of consolation. We might give Duchene similar signing bonuses to Bobby Ryan, but judging by the fact that we've never given out a full signing bonus contract, I doubt we're giving him that sort of incentive.

Johansen is another comparable, and he got 10.67 percent of the salary cap.

O'Reilly and Johansen's contracts buy up more prime years than Duchene's will. Couture just signed an 8 x 8 extension that won't start until he is 30 years old. Couture's cap hit percentage is 10.06 percent which leads to an 8M cap hit. Duchene will be about 2 years younger than Couture. Couture also got an extremely strong NTC (can only name 3 teams to get traded to) and a total of 16M in signing bonuses over the first four years of his contract (including lockout bonuses).

Because of the age difference with the first two comparable contracts and then the Couture contract, I think market value might be somewhere in the middle of the two different contract types. This tells me we're looking at a market value of between 8M and 8.5M x 8 years with some sort of signing bonuses. Couture got 16M of signing bonuses, which would be in line with what Duchene would get if we gave him similar bonuses to what Ryan received, which was 2M per season.

Granted, Duchene has to want to stay here, and he is also in a similar situation to Bobby Ryan where we gave up so much for him that letting him go in a trade or as a UFA would be disastrous. So he has the leverage to get above market value.

 

[DaveMatthew]

Personally I was talking about going forward. We're a better team than we showed last year, and not as good as our year before. Even with EK gone I don't think we'll be in the top 5 worst team next year.

We disagree about where the team is heading, which is fine. It's something that will play itself out over the course of next season and then we'll know.

How does a team lose their #1 defenseman (Karlsson), #1 LWer (Hoffman), #2 center (Brassard), and probably #2 RWer (Ryan) and come out better?

I agree that we weren't as bad as we showed last year. But we'll be going into next year with most of our best players from last year no longer on the team.

 

[ThreePosts]

We were a better team than we showed. Are we still a better team now tha Brassard Hoffman and maybe Karlsson and Ryan are gone?

Probably not, but a lot depends on the goaltending.

I don't really expect a huge bounce back from Andy, but I understand why some do.

Without that? No way...

 

[Ice-Tray]

We were a better team than we showed. Are we still a better team now tha Brassard Hoffman and maybe Karlsson and Ryan are gone?

It will depend on the kids, the new coaching approach, how harmonious the room is, and how good the goaltending is

 

[Ice-Tray]

How does a team lose their #1 defenseman (Karlsson), #1 LWer (Hoffman), #2 center (Brassard), and probably #2 RWer (Ryan) and come out better?

I agree that we weren't as bad as we showed last year. But we'll be going into next year with most of our best players from last year no longer on the team.

We'll have to see after see what happens with EK, we're going to get some players I suspect. The only one that isn't replaceable from that group is EK. Ryan was a non-factor for the most part, I imagine Boedker might replace his offence, Brass was good and we'll need one of the kids to step up, Hoff was good but not really a 1st line winger, and caused more trouble than he was worth.

There is going to be a lot of opportunity for guys, and I'm looking forward to seeing who steps up this year. With a harmonious room we may see a nice bounce back from the guy. I'm not claiming we'll be awesome, but we could find ourselves out of the cellar for sure.

Goaltending is huge of course, we need even average goaltending to fair better.

 

[PoutineSp00nZ]

No reason for him to stay in Ottawa long term. It was nice knowing you Matt.

Yeah if Im Duchene I'm already looking forward to next summer.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

 

[Cosmix]

How does a team lose their #1 defenseman (Karlsson), #1 LWer (Hoffman), #2 center (Brassard), and probably #2 RWer (Ryan) and come out better?

I agree that we weren't as bad as we showed last year. But we'll be going into next year with most of our best players from last year no longer on the team.

Dorion says the team will be greater and vastly better! One of the intrepid TV reporters or ink-stained wretches should ask him why.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Probably somewhere from 10-20. So yeah, midtier. Lots of decent players, no special ones.

I would narrow it a bit. Put Ottawa in the 10-15 range. Good, but not great/elite. Considering Chabot isn't in the prospect category knocks us down a couple pegs from the last two years, as well.

We really need Brown to pan out as a 1/2C.

 

[BloodRedArmy]

 

[Rand0m]

WTF is going on?

 

[Sensung]

WTF is going on?

Don't worry, with our massive front office Dorion will just have our AGM work out the Duchene deal...

 

[Filatov2Kovalev2Bonk]

WTF is going on?

Dorion knows this team has blown itself up internally. Captain wants out, Ryan likes it here but Melnyk wants him off the books, Hoffman out, Andy has allegedly asked out. Might as well field for Duchene. Load up with picks and cost-efficient young players and go from there. Sucks that Senators might hand a top five pick to COL, but maybe we can trade someone to them to get that back.

Rebuild is coming. If it's done properly and we get tons of juicy top talent prospects, it will be great.
Not going to be easy with a small management group though.

 

[MiscBrah]

I honestly don't get why the Sens would re-sign anyone. I mean seriously, what is the point in signing Matt Duchene to a massive contract that Melynk is going to fed up with the first season we miss the playoffs? We shipped Turris out of town and his contract is actually pretty reasonable IMO. Same with Brassard. We need to just keep the guys who like the city and work hard for their pay, but aren't legit top-tier guys. We'll have a few good runs once in a while when everyone gets hot at the right time and we'll have other years when things don't look so good.

If we aren't going to pay a top 5 player to play here, why would we pay a top 15 or top 20? Let's just stick with a bunch of 50-150 guys and see what happens.

 

[MiscBrah]

Dorion knows this team has blown itself up internally. Captain wants out, Ryan likes it here but Melnyk wants him off the books, Hoffman out, Andy has allegedly asked out. Might as well field for Duchene. Load up with picks and cost-efficient young players and go from there. Sucks that Senators might hand a top five pick to COL, but maybe we can trade someone to them to get that back.

Rebuild is coming. If it's done properly and we get tons of juicy top talent prospects, it will be great.
Not going to be easy with a small management group though.

And what will be the point of this exactly? Then when the next stud we drafts needs to get paid? We will ship him out and the same process starts again. Let's just accept that we're a middling team and will always be a middling team. We will have some great years and we will have some terrible ones.

 

[Wallet Inspector]

And what will be the point of this exactly? Then when the next stud we drafts needs to get paid? We will ship him out and the same process starts again. Let's just accept that we're a middling team and will always be a middling team. We will have some great years and we will have some terrible ones.

Being a middling team is terrible. You have almost no chance of winning playoff series consistently, let alone a cup. A rebuild is probably the best way to go. Maybe within 5 years Melnyk finally decides to sell.

 

[Spartachat]

WTF is going on?

Mark Stone will be next, watch.