Traik-eotomy
With Auston Matthews locked up, the question is how much does his struggling draft mate Patrik Laine get on his new contract? The answer is trickier than you think ... Chill out, Sabres fans ... Great players on bad teams make for weird year for awards
With Auston Matthews and
William Nylander having both signed extensions, the focus in Toronto will now shift to re-signing Mitch Marner and
Kasperi Kapanen.
In Winnipeg, the laundry list of pending free agents is a lot longer — and more complicated.
Patrik Laine, Kyle Connor and Jacob Trouba are all in the final year of their current contracts. And though the team still has control over them, getting them all under the salary cap is going to be tricky.
Let’s focus on Laine, who could be the biggest financial hurdle.
The 20-year-old, who was selected one spot after Matthews in the 2016 NHL entry draft, might be the best pure sniper since Alex Ovechkin. He had 36 goals as a rookie, finished second in the Rocket Richard Trophy race with 44 goals last year and is on pace for 40 goals this season. His .50 goals per game is on par with Matthews’ .53 goals per game.
But he’s having an awful contract year, with 35 points in 53 games, including four goals since the start of December. That’s not the kind of production you reward with a five-year deal worth $11.6 million annually.
As of now, there’s no chance Laine gets even close to that number — especially with top goal-scorer Mark Scheifele earning just $6.125-million.
Unlike Matthews, Laine is not the best player on his team. He’s not even among the topthree forwards. Right now, he’s a second-line winger. And he’s a streaky one, having mustered just one goal in his past 15 games. Worse, he’s proving to be one-dimensional.
If Laine isn’t scoring, he isn’t
doing much to help the team. He has just 10 assists this season, including three during his five-week goal drought. And he has a team-worst minus-15 rating (the nextworst player is a minus-6).
There’s a good chance Laine will break out of his slump — he had 18 goals in the month of November alone — and
challenge Ovechkin in the scoring race. But even then, he’s got company.
Connor, who had a breakout season with 31 goals last year, has 22 goals and 42 points in 53 games alongside Scheifele and Blake Wheeler. Look for him to get somewhere between $6-to-$7million.
As for Laine, he will demand
even more money. And if the Jets found him another Paul Stastny to play with at the trade deadline, he might deserve it. But as it stands right now, his best bet might be a two-year bridge contract.
It gives the Jets some flexibility to try to re-sign Trouba in a year when Wheeler’s cap hit jumps from
$5.6 million to $8.25 million.
And it allows Laine, who once believed he was every bit as good as Matthews, to prove he can be a franchise player.
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
It’s worth noting that while Laine has struggled to score, he still has 25 goals in 53 games. At this point last year,
he had 24 goals. Two years ago, he was at 28. Here’s betting he ends up with 40 … If I’m Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, the No. 1 priority at the trade deadline is finding Laine a centre. Whether it’s Matt Duchene, Derick Brassard or Brayden Schenn, the team won’t get anywhere close to the Cup final with Bryan
Little centering the second line … Someone tossed an Oilers jersey on to the ice during Tuesday’s 6-2 collapse against the Blackhawks. But until fans start flinging frozen waffles, you haven’t really hit rock bottom … A total of 201 players were selected ahead of Andreas Johnsson in the 2013 NHL draft that saw Nathan MacKinnon go first overall. Six years later, the seventh-round pick, who was selected 10 spots from the bottom, is tied for third in rookie scoring with 12 goals and 26 points in 46 games heading into last night’s action. That’s the definition of drafting and developing.
HERE’S ONE FOR YOU
The combined salaries of Toronto’s top two centres (Matthews and John Tavares) will be a league-high $22.634-million next year. In Calgary, you can get the entire top line (Sean Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau and Elias Lindholm), plus the No. 2 centre (Mikael Backlund), for
$23.325-million … There’s a bit of panic in Buffalo now that the Sabres, who rode a 10-game winning streak toward a playoff spot in November, are in danger of missing the post-season. I get that Buffalo fans are impatient. But keep in mind that this is a team that finished dead-last a year ago. The fact that they have already eclipsed last season’s win total in the first week of February is a major step in the right direction … How many games do you have to play in order to win the Calder Trophy? Because if rookie goalie Carter Hart (10-5-1), who is on a seven-game winning streak, gets the Flyers into the playoffs, he’s going to get a lot of votes.
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
It could be a weird year when it comes to individual awards. The best players are not necessarily on the best teams. Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane, who are tied for
second in league scoring with 78 points each, could both be Hart Trophy finalists in a year when neither team is expected to make the playoffs. The same goes for Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson, who is up for the Calder Trophy as the top rookie, and Vezina Trophy candidate John Gibson of Anaheim … Someone please explain why Nashville spent a second- and a seventh-round pick to acquire Brian Boyle and Cody McLeod in separate trades on Wednesday. The team lost to Winnipeg in the second round last year because of an inability to score — not because it wasn’t tough enough … Hey Carolina, if you’re going to spend your offhours choreographing ridiculous post-game celebration dances, then you deserve to have opposing players, like ex-Canes forward Elias Lindholm, mock you after a loss. It comes with the territory.