Willy Part XVI - The Zurich Summit

[Ciao]

He's holding out because they haven't reached an agreement.

If they reached one....the parties wouldn't then go back on their word.

That's how careers end.

If they reach an agreement on the contract and the extension at the same time, that would be cap circumvention under the CBA and both contracts would be void.

 

[Eternal Leaf]

Dubas said it, that Pridham is the lead guy on negotiations.

This is a quote Dubas had.

Is there a point person in your office in terms of discussing that with his agent? Or are all three of you on a conference with the agent and the agent’s reps?

Dubas: It has mostly been Brandon Pridham and myself. Lewis and I, especially in the last number of weeks as the calendar crossed to September, have had a lot of discussions just one-on-one. Brandon and he continue to stay in touch and we continue to work away at it. He has people at his office and on his staff that have also jumped in from time to time. It is at the stage now where I think continued dialogue is important and one-on-one dialogue is important.

 

[bluumax]

If Nylander sits the year and we win the cup then he's still has to make the same decision he's faced with right now- only now all of his team mates are heroes for the rest of their lives in TO and hes the guy who sat out the probably the greatest championship win in pro sports history (am I biased? maybeeee).

 

[Discordia]

You guys are not paying attention. His agent is not leading this charade and neither is Nylander. It's his father doing it. His father won't allow the agent to budge an inch.

 

[diceman934]

If it wasn't for that Gaudreau situation and if I didn't know better,I would say Dubas low-balled him...as in less than 6 million ! None of this makes any sense when looking from Willys perspective!

If we lowball him his agent would be all over the media as would his Dad.

Willy is being unreasonable period. People blaming his agent are seriously looking for any excuse to not blame Willy like you are doing. Why anyone is surprised by this is funny his dad did the exact same thing but worse. Signing with a different team then what was negotiated by his representative.

 

[Nithoniniel]

If we lowball him his agent would be all over the media as would his Dad.

Willy is being unreasonable period. People blaming his agent are seriously looking for any excuse to not blame Willy like you are doing. Why anyone is surprised by this is funny his dad did the exact same thing but worse. Signing with a different team then what was negotiated by his representative.

Willy is responsible, no question about it. If this was all about Gross, it would have ended before season started just like all his other deals.

Don't quite understand how that move by Michael Nylander is the exact same thing as these negotiation though.

 

[diceman934]

YES! Been saying this for a while.

The league might investigate....but they can't prove collusion.

So it would work out fine.

It is clearly cap circumventing and the league would take action against us and we lose Draft picks etc. Paying a player 12 m when they are worth 6m and then following up with a long term deal at 6m per is cap circumventing.

 

[diceman934]

You guys are not paying attention. His agent is not leading this charade and neither is Nylander. It's his father doing it. His father won't allow the agent to budge an inch.

It is 100% on Willy. We did not Draft and pay his Dad these last 4 years.

Why most on here want to blame everyone but Willy is a joke. He is an adult.

 

[Confucius]

I don't think Nylander is dumb enough to sit an entire year. If his agent is that dumb though Nylander should fire him immediately.

HE may not have a choice now, The Leafs may wait until they have cost certainty with Mathews and Marner. Ironic but isn't that what Willie wanted, to see what the other two get. To see if they give discounts.

 

[Nithoniniel]

HE may not have a choice now, The Leafs may wait until they have cost certainty with Mathews and Marner. Ironic but isn't that what Willie wanted, to see what the other two get. To see if they give discounts.

Leafs are not going to sit a talent like that in a year where they have Cup aspirations for such reasons. They'll sign him.

 

[Gary Nylund]

can you name off the top of your head how many teams traded their impending UFAs at the deadline who were expecting to make noise in the playoffs?

Terrible argument. If it was a bad idea to not do things just because they've never been done before then we'd never make any progress at all ever. Stay in that box, don't get creative - no thanks.

i get what you mean but you also can't strip off big pieces off a team that has plans to make some noise. now if you want to argue that it should have been done in the summer or christmas, and adjust - I'm with you there, but loping off a chunk of team before the playoffs i've never seen done before. maybe one - but not 2-3+ of a contending team.

Again, saying you can't do something because you've never seen it done before is a bad mindset.

and people will go yah but we lost in the first round. yah we did, and that's the gamble, and you can say we could have done that without them. but that's hindsight (and the risk).

It's hindsight now, it wasn't hindsight when we still had the chance to do it and many of us were saying we should do it.

Willy is responsible, no question about it. If this was all about Gross, it would have ended before season started just like all his other deals.

Don't quite understand how that move by Michael Nylander is the exact same thing as these negotiation though.

Well, we can still hope it's Gross or his dad or whoever else, that way there's still a chance that Willie decides he's been getting bad advice and signs. But if it is Willie and if it is true that he's asking for more money than is reasonable then it's really hard to understand his thought process and it's just bad news all around for everyone. He's such an important part of this team despite all the chirping about how we don't need him and I'm still hoping it all gets worked out soon.

 

[Warden of the North]

So if the plane thing has any legs Willy will be in Toronto today and have a contract signed soon thereafter.

Or he goes to Russia instead and signs soon

 

[deletethis]

I guess one thing for all of us to consider is that William's equally talented father played for 7 different NHL organizations over 15 seasons. For some individuals playing for 1 organization seems like a career goal. For others it's simply a business where you change locations frequently for the best opportunity.

 

[Trapper]

So if the plane thing has any legs Willy will be in Toronto today and have a contract signed soon thereafter.

Or he goes to Russia instead and signs soon

Or now that weed is legal they all sit down with a big bag of chips (laugh about everything) and get the deal done from someone's basement.

 

[ChuckWoods]

So if the plane thing has any legs Willy will be in Toronto today and have a contract signed soon thereafter.

Or he goes to Russia instead and signs soon

At this point I wouldnt mind a resolution either way so this team can move forward.

Kappy will clearly benefit from his absence and likely comes at a cheaper cost.

If Nylander sits, he is only hurting himself, and rights will be moved in the off-season.

This approach by Dubas is clearly the appropriate one to resolve our cap crunch.

 

[IBeL34f]

Has anyone ever had their salary reduced after going through arbitration?
I don't mean the demands reduced, I mean, the arbitrator awarding the player less money than he was making the previous season.

If it hasn't happened before, then giving Nylander a large contract this winter and running the risk of him taking the team to arbitration would be the dumbest thing in the world.
Not to mention the qualifying offer would have to be....110% of the previous salary I believe.

If it were to happen, the NHLPA might actually fight against the lower salary contract as well.
Other teams would almost certainly file grievances alleging foul play.

It's illegal to agree to terms on a second contract before you've signed the first one. The Leafs would be required to qualify him for his previous salary + the minimum legal increase (around 10%? I can't remember that detail).

And in what imaginary world does the agent lose his career? Would he piss off the GM he was dealing with and potentially many others? Sure he would - I guess it's lucky for him then that GMs don't employ him, players do. If anything that'd be a major selling point for the agent. "I was supposed to get my client a deal for 12 and another for 5x5, instead I got him 12 and 8x7" or whatever money Nylander would get as a 23 year old UFA because the Leafs sure as hell wouldn't be able to keep him if it means 12+.

People brought this idea up with Tavares in the summer - there's a reason it didn't happen with him, and there are 20 reasons it won't happen with Nylander. There is so much more risk in doing that in this situation. Don't waste your time day dreaming about it.

Just wanted to touch on this briefly - The 10% increase on subsequent qualifying offers is only applied to contracts where the previous base salary was $660,000 or less. Since Nylander's base salary in this scenario would be (well) over $1M, the Leafs would only have to offer him 100% of his previous base salary.

• The qualifying offer is calculated from the players base salary (NHL salary minus signing bonus), and at minimum must meet the seasons minimum salary requirements:
  • 110% of the base salary if the base salary is less than or equal to $660,000
  • 105% of the base salary if the base salary is greater than $660,000 or less than $1,000,000. However, this qualifying offer cannot exceed $1,000,000.
  • 100% of the base salary if the base salary is equal to or greater than $1,000,000.
  • CBA Reference 10.2 (a) (ii)

Qualifying Offer Calculator - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps

It's still a silly, risky idea, but I just wanted to clear up that little detail.

 

[kb]

Leafs are not going to sit a talent like that in a year where they have Cup aspirations for such reasons. They'll sign him.

Right now best case scenario for both team and player to take this right to Dec 1st. Nylander could get a higher AAV, and the Leafs would get a lower cap hit in seasons 2 through 7. Just structure the contract so his salary this year is league minimum and the rest as signing bonus. Let's say the Leafs were offering 7 x $6.25 million to sign before puck drop on the season; they could offer him 7 x $6.55 on Dec 1st and still have a lower cap hit in years 2-7, but take a bigger hit this season. Nylander, if paid the league minimum (but with a substantial signing bonus), will only lose roughly $200k or so in salary.

I honestly believe that right now it's a loophole they will both exploit, to the benefit of team and player. Nylander will get at least $2 million more over the life of the contract by doing this, and the Leafs will actually get a bit less cap hit too.

I don't believe this was the original plan, but once they went by the first couple of games, it really doesn't make sense financially from either side to settle. And it's not like the Leafs are hurting right now.

 

[kb]

The message is, you can get more money, and the Leafs can get a lower cap hit.

Duh.

 

[Confucius]

So if the plane thing has any legs Willy will be in Toronto today and have a contract signed soon thereafter.

Or he goes to Russia instead and signs soon

or he's snowboarding with Lupul

 

[Confucius]

The message is, you can get more money, and the Leafs can get a lower cap hit.

Duh.

He wont get more money. It would set a bad precedent, just sit out and wait for more coin. Nope he missed his best deal already, it only gets worse now.

 

[Albz]

Why dont leafs managment just give him a time line. We are doing fine without him and if he doesnt smarten up and sign the contract than they can sit for the year. And focus on marner and matthews contracts. This is getting stupid now.

 

[DarkKnight]

or he's snowboarding with Lupul

Naked.

 

[BoredBrandonPridham]

Again, source?

He said it verbally. I don't owe you anything, btw.

 

[BoredBrandonPridham]

Not quite what he was saying but this was a tidbit from the Athletic interview a little while ago.

When you make the complexity of it — and this is something I’ve wondered about — how do you hit on the exact number that makes sense for the Leafs while projecting long-term? How do you decide X is good?

(Assistant GM) Brandon Pridham is in charge of all that for us. And he’s one of the best in the sport at that, because of his unique experience of being with the league and now being here for five years. You see his intelligence and his ability to build these things out and model them. We also have an excellent R&D department, led by Darryl Metcalf, and they’re able to work with Brandon, work together and model things out. We try to project everybody out — the players, the salary cap, what our team structure is going to be...)

I’m not gonna post the rest for obvious reasons but yea I think that’s what he might be referring to.

Not exactly. This is Pridham modelling the cap structure, etc... But Dubas said verbally elsewhere that he's the lead on the negotiations.

 

[kb]

He wont get more money. It would set a bad precedent, just sit out and wait for more coin. Nope he missed his best deal already, it only gets worse now.

I don't think this is the case. As I pointed out earlier here, let's say the Leafs are hard and firm at a $6.25 AAV on a 7 year deal. If they take it to Dec 1st, the Leafs and Nylander can accomplish the exact same thing by signing him to a 7 year, $6.55 million AAV. The cap hit this year would be in excess of $9 million, which the Leafs have the room to absorb, but the cap hit next year and beyond would actually be less than $6.25 million. Simply structure the contract as league minimum ($650K) this year, and the rest as signing bonus. That way he loses about $200K this season, but he gets $2.1 million dollars more over the life of the contract (minus that $200k or so).

This is actually brilliant. Which is why I believe there is zero sense of urgency now from either side to get this done - as it truly appears. They probably already have the terms drawn up, and are just counting down the days.