I agree
At the end of the day though, a deal that is signed, sets the market, or at least I believe it should.
If Pasta is a 70-80 point winger, and no matter what the cap is, signed a contract below what he should be paid, does that not become the new comparable? Even if he should be paid more, how could Willie argue he deserves more, he has not been the better player?
Give him a similar deal to Ehlers, and add the increase for cap, or just give him Pasta money.
But he is not worth what he wants, he just is not.
The "market" is whatever the most you can get today is, that is what he is fighting for, the most he can get on a deal he is comfortable with.
If Pastranak's deal is the ceiling, which is fair, since he is a better player, but also on a deal most would call team friendly, then the real ceiling for Willy's deal is ~$7.05M on 6 years, ~$7.45M on 7, and $7.85M on 8 assuming that each additional year of that deal costs you about another 0.5% of the cap.
So if the Leafs get Willy for anything under those deals against those terms, he would be on what is considered a team friendly deal.
The Leafs are coming in low, using Ehlers because obviously they want a team friendly deal, Nylander is coming out asking for $8Mx8 years cause he wants to fall as little under those ceilings as possible. The big problem is the Leafs are also looking to shave off years to save cap space, where Nylander seems more intent on getting close to max years.
Everyone talks about a $2M gap, the real gap isn't that, but there seems to also be a gap in the number of years as well.
The other part of this is that neither side was under any real early pressure to get this done. The Leafs are only worried about the Dec 1 deadline. They started the season strong, and their division set up makes it likely they will make the playoffs even with a slower start. This dragging on likely means even when everything is finalised, the cap AAV calculation will increase the first year AAV while lowering it in later years, which is actually to their advantage.
From Nylander's point of view, he isn't losing out on money at the rate people are guessing. The Leafs can easily afford to pay him most of his first year salary in a signing bonus, so realistically, if they do that and pay him $1M this year in salary, he's losing more like $5500 a day not $35,000. This makes the gamble to get even an additional $100,000 a year worthwhile when we are talking about a multi year deal.
This was always likely to be the Leafs toughest negotiation. It was first up, it sets a precedent, and the player likely represents the most uncertainty of the bunch (at the time he will need to sign) of what he really is, there was new management immediately in place the team has big negotiations to deal with directly after it, and neither side was in a situation where they lose much by taking their time and being patient.
