I stand by it! "Lowball" may have been an exaggeration but there is no doubt that he will get more than 8 mill per, based on his performance this season and the inflated contracts owners are dispensing. Have to agree to disagree.
Ok at least you admit that "lowball" was an exaggeration but do you know what it means? Lowball means that it would be way under the realistic demand or ending result. If so, how much do you think Duchene will sign for? I think we all expect him to sign a bit over 8.0 per year, but do you think he's going to get 10 M$ per year? Even if you think he's going to get 9 M$ per year, 8 M$ would not be a lowball offer at all.
I don't know if you have ever negotiated anything, but you never throw your highest offer right away, that's simply not how you negotiate. That's not the way I ended up with very good deals on a few houses, because paying under market value helps you to make a better profit in the end. But there's a line where you can't go too low because the seller might not even counter-offer if they consider it "insulting".
In the case here, I don't think anybody will find that 8 M$ offer to Duchene's camp anywhere close to "insulting". Anyway, I don't know how much he wants but if he wants over 9 M$ per season, then I hope we trade him. I think NHL teams should be ready to overpay and end up having a few overpaid players because it's better than not having them and you need to spend to be competitive. In the end, and in a large part because of the arena and all the events you can have there, having a NHL team should still be quite profitable.
Anyway, here's the most recent forwards heavy contracts (name, age, years, cap hit)
Tyler Seguin 26 8 $9,850,000
Max Pacioretty 29 4 $7,000,000
Blake Wheeler 32 5 $8,250,000
Mark Stone 26 1 $7,350,000
Nikita Kucherov 25 8 $9,500,000
James van Riemsdyk 29 5 $7,000,000
Logan Couture 29 8 $8,000,000
John Tavares 27 7 $11,000,000
Evander Kane 26 7 $7,000,000
Jack Eichel 20 8 $10,000,000
Leon Draisaitl 21 8 $8,500,000
Ryan Johansen 24 8 $8,000,000
Connor McDavid 20 8 $12,500,000
Evgeny Kuznetsov 25 8 $7,800,000
How much do you think Duchene is worth? I know he's been productive for a dozen months but he was "Turris-like" productive the 4 years before. Turris signed 6 x 6 when he got traded.
Teravainen signs 5 years 5.4 million. It's not a perfect comparable to Dzingel, but there are some similarities.
I could be mistaken, but I believe he has two RFA years left. If so, it's 2 RFA years/3 UFA years. This is the big divergence from Dzingel who is a pending UFA.
Teravainen's progression production wise with Carolina was a bit similar to Dzingel prior to this season, He was a 40ish point guy, then had a big breakthrough 60+ point season last year. The difference being, Teravainen is proving himself to be a top 6 producer again this season since he's on pace for 60+ points after a considerable amount of the season has been played.
Teravainen is more proven production wise, but his contract has RFA years in it. Both those pros and cons probably help offset each other and make this a fairly decent comparable for Dzingel.
He's not extending today, we're probably trading him, but with the info we have today something in the 5x5 range give or take a few 100k seems appropriate. A lot can change based on how well he does with his new team during the run to the playoffs if he is traded.
Another reason to think the 5 years x 5.5 I had for Dzingel in my last post was a good expectation.
Dzingel ~ 5.5 per
Duchene ~ 8.5 per
Stone ~ 9.0 per