Confirmed with Link: When Will Werenski Sign (UPDATE: 9 September 2019, apparently - $15m/3yr)

[EspenK]

I wouldn't be surprised. Damn, Auston Matthews and the 5yr deal.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Arbitration hearings start July 20th. Trouba is scheduled for the 25th, so if there's no movement on that front, then I'd expect nothing on Werenski for a couple weeks.

 

[MFRONE]

Trouba just got 7 years and $56 million from the Rangers.

ZW and his agent must be thrilled.

 

[EspenK]

Trouba just got 7 years and $56 million from the Rangers.

ZW and his agent must be thrilled.

8 years and 7mm worth the same dollars. Zach is younger & less experienced so per year he shouldn't get the same AAV but he is going to be good. If I was Jarmo I'd try like hell to get that done.

If he can get him for less great but I don't see a whole bit of difference between 6.5 & 7/ Yeah I know, $4 mm over 8 years.

 

[majormajor]

8 years and 7mm worth the same dollars. Zach is younger & less experienced so per year he shouldn't get the same AAV but he is going to be good. If I was Jarmo I'd try like hell to get that done.

If he can get him for less great but I don't see a whole bit of difference between 6.5 & 7/ Yeah I know, $4 mm over 8 years.

If you can get him to sign for 8 years, then sure I'd be fine with that. But if he's insisting on $7m x 5 or something like that, forget it. String him along on $5.5m short term deals.

 

[EspenK]

If you can get him to sign for 8 years, then sure I'd be fine with that. But if he's insisting on $7m x 5 or something like that, forget it. String him along on $5.5m short term deals.

Agree. 2 or 3 years at 5.5 seems ok if he won't go 8 (or 7)

 

[Jackets16]

If the team can't get the term they want then the player can't get the amount he wants.

 

[Cyclones Rock]

With rare exception I'm not a fan of 8 year deals. Even with the young players. By the time the UFA years kick in, then they have NMCs and bonuses effectively make the deals buyout proof. Also, it's pretty commonly agreed that coaches have their "shelf lives" with a given team. I think that the same principle applies to players albeit generally with a much longer window of usefulness.

If Werenski and his agent only want 5 years, then try to get them to go 6. There's enough risk/flaws in Werenski's game to make an 8 year deal potentially undesirable. Also, if he were to sign for 6 years, he would (potentially) have spent the first 9 years of his career with the CBJ. Most players have played their best hockey by then. It's not necessarily downhill from there, but generally a plateau has been reached.

The longest term-8 years- for ZW is not a given to be in the best interests of the CBJ.

 

[EspenK]

I see your point and agree with some of it. He will be 30 in the last year of an year deal. Not many top level guys fall off that much by that age. Now if we're talking another 8 year deal on top of this one, no thanks.
Problem is that this 5 year deal thing has definitely shifted the power to the players. At some point you have to step up and take a risk to keep your top guys.

 

[Long Live Lyle]

I see your point and agree with some of it. He will be 30 in the last year of an year deal. Not many top level guys fall off that much by that age. Now if we're talking another 8 year deal on top of this one, no thanks.
Problem is that this 5 year deal thing has definitely shifted the power to the players. At some point you have to step up and take a risk to keep your top guys.

Yep. Imagine if we did an 8-year deal with Seth instead of 6-year. Probably could’ve been done at only about $1M more per season. Would’ve been a huge risk then but would’ve paid off tremendously.

 

[Cyclones Rock]

I see your point and agree with some of it. He will be 30 in the last year of an year deal. Not many top level guys fall off that much by that age. Now if we're talking another 8 year deal on top of this one, no thanks.
Problem is that this 5 year deal thing has definitely shifted the power to the players. At some point you have to step up and take a risk to keep your top guys.

The recent RFA surge in power vs. management won't stop until a player or two is forced to sit out a season. I don't know if this will happen. With a hard cap, there's probably going to be a squeeze on the lesser players as management really doesn't have a strong incentive to not meet the demands of a top RFA. The days of a Riley Nash earning almost $3 million per year may be a thing of the past very soon.

I agree that Werenski will probably not have a deep fall off in play by the end of a theoretical 8 year deal, but 8 years is still a long time for a hockey player and there's always a fair amount of risk for the latter years of one of these. The McDavids, Kucherovs and Panarins are worth the risk. Still not sold that ZW is.

 

[majormajor]

I don't see much risk for Zach. He's a driven player and mature for his age. There's injury risk that comes with an 8 year deal but that's true for everyone including the best.

 

[MAHJ71]

I don't see much risk for Zach. He's a driven player and mature for his age. There's injury risk that comes with an 8 year deal but that's true for everyone including the best.

Also don't think he gets nearly enough credit for playing through the shoulder injury 2 seasons ago.. for 3/4 of the season too..

 

[cslebn]

The recent RFA surge in power vs. management won't stop until a player or two is forced to sit out a season. I don't know if this will happen. With a hard cap, there's probably going to be a squeeze on the lesser players as management really doesn't have a strong incentive to not meet the demands of a top RFA. The days of a Riley Nash earning almost $3 million per year may be a thing of the past very soon.

I agree that Werenski will probably not have a deep fall off in play by the end of a theoretical 8 year deal, but 8 years is still a long time for a hockey player and there's always a fair amount of risk for the latter years of one of these. The McDavids, Kucherovs and Panarins are worth the risk. Still not sold that ZW is.

This is why the next CBA negotiation will be interesting

 

[Cyclones Rock]

This is why the next CBA negotiation will be interesting

Donald Fehr may have some internal division on his hands. If salary expenditures become too tilted toward the stars, then the rank and file (for lack of a better term) may become problematic for the union.

Agreed. It's going to be interesting on a number of levels.

 

[JacketsDavid]

Donald Fehr may have some internal division on his hands. If salary expenditures become too tilted toward the stars, then the rank and file (for lack of a better term) may become problematic for the union.

Agreed. It's going to be interesting on a number of levels.

It seems to happen in every pro sports with free agency.

The top tier players get paid way too much. Seems like every NBA team has 2 guys with max contracts and 3 guys getting paid the minimum, leaving 7 guys to divide up what is left.
The NFL teams do similar things the veteran QB gets paid, the pass rushers get paid, the guys protecting the QB get paid, a few other top level players. They all try to find the rookies who can contribute (especially at premium positions like RB) and a lot of other guys get paid but not at an elite level.
The NHL will go the same way is more similar in rosters to the NBA than the NFL so you will end up with 4 guys getting paid really well, hope you have enough young guys who contribute and then you slop together ~10 other guys with money remaining.

Just the bottom line in salary cap worlds:
-Top tier guys get paid
-Young guys with talent will get paid
-Solid vets will be ok (let's be honest not poor) but they get squeezed.
-Teams count on finding young controllable players that can contribute. Those guys don't get paid at first.

 

[blahblah]

It seems to happen in every pro sports with free agency.

Not sure what this had to do with Werenski, however watching the contracts it's hard to say that the NHL isn't paying it's players. Personally I think they seem to be pretty well distributed.

If we just look at our team, Harrington is getting 1.6 and Nutivarra is getting 2.7. You have Nash at 2.75. Savard is at 4.5. Anderson should get over 5 on his next contract. If OB builds on last season he should easily be in the 4's. Wennberg got a (more than) fair deal he hasn't lived up to. Jenner is at 3.75.

I tend to think it's hard to anything negative about these contacts, these are all good contracts for what they've done in the NHL. If you look at other teams this doesn't seem to be an unusual situation.

I'm not sure I really see a problem in the NHL to be honest. The players and agents might disagree, but I don't think the agents will ever be happy so I'm not worried about them. The players just listen to their agents and the NHLPA.

 

[JacketsDavid]

Not sure what this had to do with Werenski, however watching the contracts it's hard to say that the NHL isn't paying it's players. Personally I think they seem to be pretty well distributed.

If we just look at our team, Harrington is getting 1.6 and Nutivarra is getting 2.7. You have Nash at 2.75. Savard is at 4.5. Anderson should get over 5 on his next contract. If OB builds on last season he should easily be in the 4's. Wennberg got a (more than) fair deal he hasn't lived up to. Jenner is at 3.75.

I tend to think it's hard to anything negative about these contacts, these are all good contracts for what they've done in the NHL. If you look at other teams this doesn't seem to be an unusual situation.

I'm not sure I really see a problem in the NHL to be honest. The players and agents might disagree, but I don't think the agents will ever be happy so I'm not worried about them. The players just listen to their agents and the NHLPA.

Right now we are distributed but you need to look at successful team. Better yet think of where we would be if we were paying Bob and Bred $10M+ per year. We would have some very tough choices coming up.

Pittsburgh's GM has recently said due to the cap they will carry less than 23 players this year and they are planning not to extend RFA until they have to (lot of 1 year contracts). That is to other extreme.

Again the CBJ current situation is not having any veteran stars it's led by young players and average veterans allows it to be balanced in payroll. But for teams that have been successful and resigned their core it's the traditional free agent roster.

 

[blahblah]

Right now we are distributed but you need to look at successful team. Better yet think of where we would be if we were paying Bob and Bred $10M+ per year. We would have some very tough choices coming up.

Pittsburgh's GM has recently said due to the cap they will carry less than 23 players this year and they are planning not to extend RFA until they have to (lot of 1 year contracts). That is to other extreme.

Again the CBJ current situation is not having any veteran stars it's led by young players and average veterans allows it to be balanced in payroll. But for teams that have been successful and resigned their core it's the traditional free agent roster.

I have looked at other teams. Pittsburgh (your example) has been running their top two players at around 9 for many years and they still paid their other players pretty well. I don't see whatever issue you are seeing. For all their "problems", they managed to sign Tanev to 3.5 million per season. Seriously look at the Pens roster. This has nothing to do with not paying players well, they just have a ton of 3.25-6 million dollar players (11, yes 11) along side Letang, Malkin and Crosby.

Now the NHLPA might try and say that RFA's aren't getting paid well, but we know that's false.

The team that might be collapsing under a top heavy contract situation could be someone like Chicago. They have a more modest salary structure at forward, not on defense. Let's be honest, how much more do you think Carpenter or Tamph should get paid? What do you think Perleni is going to demand? It's not like they are not going to get paid, they just don't have the performance to justify much more.

Bottom line players are still getting paid well. RFA's that deserve large raises are getting it for the most part. There is the occasional disagreement leading to arbitration, but it's certainly not a large problem.

 

[DarkandStormy]

I assume the discussion are around:
3x5-5.5
(maybe) 6x6
8x7ish

Brisson has a long list of big name clients - I can't recall any difficult negotiations or holdouts off the top of my head. He's negotiating against himself in a way since he also reps Seth.

 

[StreetHawk]

I assume the discussion are around:
3x5-5.5
(maybe) 6x6
8x7ish

Brisson has a long list of big name clients - I can't recall any difficult negotiations or holdouts off the top of my head. He's negotiating against himself in a way since he also reps Seth.

Kind of have to break things down to rfa vs ufa years. Trouba, OEL, Carlson got $8-$8.25 per for their ufa years (Trouba has 1 rfa year left). But keep in mind that those first 2 guys start their deals at age 28, thus making the early parts of those deals worth more because they will age and decline with time.

Werenski is due to become a ufa at age 26. 4 rfa years plus however many ufa years you want to buy. Price of high end ufa D is $8 mill per right now but again if you’re trying to buy out his age 26-27 years that should be higher because those are prime years so should be valued as such. Meier as a forward set the benchmark for his rfa years at $6.8 mill per based on his big. QO for his final rfa year.

To get term you’re paying big money like the difference between ekblad and Jones. $7.5 per for 8 vs $5.4 for 6. Don’t think any player wants to be the next Jossi on D to be that drastically underpaid compared to say a Pietroangelo who made like $6.5 per compared to $4 mill per. That’s $17.5 mill difference over the 7 years.

If as a player you’re lucky health wise to play until 35 or so, what’s the best way to maximize your earnings? Do you do 5 years now to hit ufa at 27 then sign for max term after to get to 35? Do you do bigger term now if the money is there to then be signed for 7-8 years to get to 29/30 and likely not get max term on the next contract? See what makes sense for each player and their situation.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Werenski believes time for young players to step up, lead Blue Jackets

 

[EspenK]

Interesting (scary?) that it is nearly Aug 1 and as far as I can recall no top RFA coming off an ELC has signed yet. My guess is the days of these guys going for long term deals at this point in their careers is long time gone. I'm thinking 3, 5 & 6 will be the terms of thee deals.

One benefit to teams is they can hold $ down a bit for now but when these deals are done and they all want 8 years and big bucks look out.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Interesting (scary?) that it is nearly Aug 1 and as far as I can recall no top RFA coming off an ELC has signed yet. My guess is the days of these guys going for long term deals at this point in their careers is long time gone. I'm thinking 3, 5 & 6 will be the terms of thee deals.

One benefit to teams is they can hold $ down a bit for now but when these deals are done and they all want 8 years and big bucks look out.

Aho - 5 year via offersheet

But yeah, there's Rantanen, Point, Marner, Werenski, Tkachuk, Laine, Connor, McAvoy, etc.

 

[EspenK]

Inside the RFA standoff and why it impacts nearly every NHL...

Colleague Aaron Portzline reported that the two sides have discussed a three-year deal and that remains the most logical solution for Werenski. In Provorov’s case with the Flyers, it’s believed a six-year contract is the preference. McAvoy’s deal is even more unique because he hasn’t accrued enough time to be eligible for an offer sheet. So the Bruins have more leverage in that situation than the others, which gives them an opportunity to squeeze McAvoy a bit more.

Not sure who believes the 3 year deal is most logical. I can see it as a chance for the Jackets to further evaluate Z but also exposes them to re=signing long term deals for both Z & Seth in the same year. Ugh! No thanks. I still think going long, 7 or 8 years is best from Jackets' perspective.

MOD EDIT: fix quote tags