Expect young stars to sign big contracts
Just like last season, teams will shell out for young RFAS they can build around
The list of names was as long as it was impressive.
Mitch Marner. Patrik Laine. Mikko Rantanen. Matthew Tkachuk. Brayden Point. Charlie Mcavoy. Sebastian Aho. Kyle Connor.
One year ago, all of them were coming off their entry-level contracts at exactly the same time, culminating in what became a watershed moment for restricted free agents. Players under the age of 23 had never held so much bargaining power. And one by one, they took advantage of the situation to make more money than ever before.
While Marner (six years, $10.89 million) and Rantanen (six, $9.25) signed long-term deals that carried $10.89-million and $9.25-million cap hits, respectively, Tkachuk (three years, $21 million) and Laine (two years, $13.5 million) went with bridge deals.
Either way, everyone cashed in. The question is whether this year’s crop of RFAS, which includes the New York Islanders’ Mathew Barzal and Pierre-luc Dubois of the Columbus Blue Jackets, will find similar fortunes now that the salary cap will remain frozen at $81.5 million for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t think anything will change,” said agent Dan Milstein, who represents Toronto’s Ilya Mikheyev. “The upper class is going to get what they want because teams are building around those players. The teams are more likely to squeeze the middle guys over the next two years.
“We already know what the cap is going to be. In some ways, it makes it easier to plan. If you have a top player, you’re going to pay him.”
Milstein added that the truncated season could have more of an impact on evaluating a player’s worth than the salary cap, especially if that player has arbitration rights and has spent limited time in the NHL.
“(Mikheyev) has arbitration rights. And he’s a unique case, because he played only 39 games and was injured,” Milstein said of the 25-year-old winger, who is in his first NHL season. “If they use his stats and multiply by two, he’ll get one number. I honestly don’t know what they’re going to do. But I’m not sweating.”
HORVAT PASSES ON PARENTAL LEAVE
The deadline for opting out of the 24-team post-season is approaching, but Vancouver Canucks captain Bo Horvat, whose wife gave birth to their first child last week, never considered not playing this year.
“Not one time have I thought about opting out,” he said during a conference call on Thursday. “I want to be there for my teammates. I want to be there when the season gets going and be part of winning here.”
The Canucks will be in the hub city of Edmonton for the duration of the post-season. Players won’t be allowed to have family members stay with them until the start of the conference final. That means Horvat could go two months or longer without seeing his wife and son.
“I’m not going to lie. It’s not easy to leave your newborn after a week. But it is what it is. I’m focused on winning a Stanley Cup right now,” said Horvat.
“Hopefully, by the end of this,
I’ll be putting him in the Stanley Cup.”
DRAFT GURU JOINS WILD
The person partly responsible for drafting Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes is now working for the team that Vancouver will play in the first round of the post-season.
Judd Brackett, who left the Canucks in May after an apparent power struggle with GM Jim Benning, was announced as the Minnesota Wild’s director of amateur scouting on Thursday.
The Wild, who have arguably the best prospect not playing in the NHL in Kirill Kaprizov (a fifth-round pick in 2015), could use all the help they could get. Of their last four drafts, only Luke Kunin has reached the NHL.
LOOSE NOTES
The salary caps remaining flat at $81.5 million won’t affect the Canucks this year or next year. But with Pettersson, Hughes and goalie Thatcher Demko all coming off their entry-level contracts in 2022, the team better start putting some money away for the future. “I wouldn’t want to have a head office job with the way that the cap is,” said Horvat. “But we’re going to do whatever we can to keep our core group together. How we’re going to do it, I’m not sure.” … Horvat on the expected intensity of the playoffs after a four-month layoff: “Guys are going to be going 100 miles per hour,” he said. “It’s going to be one of the toughest playoffs ever” … Horvat, who is the Canucks’ player rep, said he was pleasantly surprised at how the league and the NHLPA were able to put aside their past differences and hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement for the good of the game. “For the most part it was pretty civil,” he said. “I’ve heard in the past that it hasn’t been pretty and things haven’t gone this smooth. It was pretty impressive to see how they did it in this short a time.”