LEAFS HOLDING ALL THE CARDS
With no arbitration rights, Nylander has no leverage in contract negotiations
GETTY IMAGES
GETTY IMAGES
Agents call it the “Dark Year.”
It’s the period of time when an NHL player comes out of his entry-level contract. And it’s an appropriate term for what William Nylander is going through right now.
As a Group 2 restricted free agent, the 22-year-old forward is essentially sitting at home in the dark. He has no arbitration rights. He has zero leverage. All he can do is wait around and hope the Toronto Maple Leafs will eventually meet his contract demands or hope that another team signs him to an offer sheet.
Of course, the reality is neither is going to happen.
These contract impasses always end up the same way. The team wins. The player loses. After all, the only negotiating tactic at a player’s disposal is not playing. But unless he’s willing to risk an entire year without getting paid, even that gets old.
We saw it this week, as Nick Ritchie signed a three-year deal with a $1.5-million cap hit with the Anaheim Ducks after sitting out for seven games. And we saw it two years ago, when Winnipeg ’s Jacob Trouba sat out for the first month of the season, only to sign a two-year deal worth just $6 million.
Chances are Nylander, who has up until Dec. 1 to sign a new contract or sit out the entire year, will also get less than he bargained for. But that doesn’t mean the next crop of Group 2 free agents will be willing to sign any deal presented to them. If anything, this is just the beginning of what could be a Dark Year not just for players, but the entire NHL.
“It’s more about the projection than it is about anybody being greedy or difficult,” said agent Mark Guy of Newport Sports Management Inc., who represents Ritchie. “It’s trying to figure out what a player is going to be and what that looks like down the road. In most cases, that one year is a no man’s land for a player.”
The best players in the league today are also some of the youngest. Of the top five scorers, three (Toronto’s Auston Matthews, Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen and Carolina’s Sebastian Aho) are in the final year of their entry-level contracts. That doesn’t include Toronto’s Mitch Marner, Tampa Bay’s Braden Point or Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine, whose deals also expire next summer.
How do you determine the market value for a player such as Vancouver’s Brock Boeser, who by the end of this season will be lucky to have played 150 games? What happens when a player and a team have differing views on his long-term potential? What if the team isn’t being fair?
“The fix is fairly simple,” Octagon Hockey agent Allan Walsh wrote Postmedia News Friday. “Players coming out of entry-level should have arbitration rights. The one dark year encourages these impasses. Give the players the ability to negotiate a comparable contract to the leaguewide marketplace.”
Giving players arbitration rights a year earlier would prevent contract impasses, but not everyone is convinced the current rules put the players at a disadvantage.
“I don’t buy that at all,” said Red Wings GM Ken Holland, adding that the age of unrestricted free agency dropped from
31 to as low as 25 depending on service time. “Dylan Larkin came out of his entry-level contract at 23 and got $35.5 million. He wouldn’t have got that 15 years ago. He would have been bridged and maybe bridged again, because we had him up until he was 31.”
Holland wouldn’t comment on the Nylander situation, but he’s been through this sort of thing before.
A year ago, Andreas Athanasiou went unsigned for the first three weeks of the season before eventually agreeing to a oneyear deal worth $1.387 million, which gave him arbitration rights the following summer. In that case, the Red Wings caved because they were losing games without him.
That sort of pressure hasn’t affected the first-place Leafs, who have six wins in eight games and are averaging a league-best 4.13 goals per game. In Nylander’s absence, Matthews has scored an NHL-best 10 goals and 16 points, while Kasperi Kapanen has emerged as a suitable replacement with four goals and eight points.
The Leafs, who sent GM Kyle Dubas to Switzerland to meet with Nylander this week, still want him in the lineup. But at what price: $6 million or $8 million?
It’s trickier than you think. Nylander has played three seasons in the NHL, but because he was called up for the final six weeks in his rookie year, he’s played less than 200 games.
The Leafs still don’t know if he’s going to be a winger or a centre. They don’t know if he’s capable of scoring 20 or 30 or 40 goals, or whether the 61-point seasons he put up in back-toback years are his ceiling, or a sign of things to come.
Holland faced a similar question with Larkin, who as a rookie scored 23 goals and 45 points, but then followed it up with 17 goals and 32 points in Year 2, and then 16 goals and 63 points in Year 3.
Would Larkin score 70 points in Year 4? Could he eventually reach 80 points? Maybe, said Holland, but so far he hadn’t.
“I think any 22-year-old who signs a five- or eight-year deal, there has to be some speculation based upon that contract,” said Holland. “But I didn’t sit around and say, ‘In four years he’s going to be an 85-point guy. Those guys make $8 million. But that’s once they’ve done it.’ I can’t pay you on speculation, because every guy’s going to walk into my office and tell me what they’re going to do.”