National Post (National Edition)
NHL free agents headed toward uncertainty
EARLY END TO SCHEDULE WILL FORCE TOUGHER TEAM, PLAYER DECISIONS
The pitch has become a bit more problematic these days. When the Arizona Coyotes traded for Taylor Hall and his expiring contract in December, general manager John Chayka knew there was no guarantee that the pending free agent would stay beyond the season. But Chayka also knew that the odds of retaining Hall increased with every game that the team won.
The Coyotes were betting that Hall would make them better. But they were also betting on themselves.
Make the playoffs and win a round or two — something that Hall had never done in his career — and the 28-yearold might think twice about leaving in the off-season. Go all the way and win a Cup and Hall might just be a Coyote for life.
“That was our bet when we acquired Taylor,” Chayka told NHL.com on Wednesday. “He always wanted to be in a playoff hunt and have a chance to compete for a Stanley Cup.”
But then the coronavirus hit. And for the Coyotes, it hit at the worst possible time.
If the season is done — and it’s looking more and more like that is a realistic possibility — then Arizona’s chances of keeping Hall beyond this year appear to be over as well.
After all, it’s difficult to convince Hall that the Coyotes are a championship contender when there’s no championship to play for. It’s even more difficult with the Coyotes sitting in 11th place in the Western Conference standings, four points back of the final wild card spot and with just six more points than the gutted team he left behind in New Jersey.
“It’s definitely a weird time to possibly be a free agent,” Hall recently told Sportsnet. “But there’s so much uncertainty through the league … throughout the world, really.”
When it comes to attracting or retaining free agents, money and term are usually at the top of everyone’s list. The deciding factor, however, is goes beyond that. Players want an opportunity to win. They expect it.
That’s why, beyond coming home, John Tavares ended up leaving the New York Islanders for the Toronto Maple Leafs a couple of years ago. And it’s why Hall had been waiting to see how this season played out before deciding on his future.
He wanted to see if Arizona would provide him a better chance of winning than Edmonton and New Jersey had. He wanted proof that the Coyotes were the real deal.
Of course, it goes both ways.
When Hall joined the Coyotes in mid-December, they were in first place in the Pacific Division. But with just 10 goals and 27 points in 35 games, the team has since gone 14-17-4 and fallen to fifth.
He hasn’t been the missing piece. As of right now, he is as much as the problem as anyone else on that roster. That hurts him at a time when he had been looking forward to the biggest payday of his career.
And with the cap expected to remain stagnant at US$81.5 million next season,
HE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE IN A PLAYOFF HUNT…
he is not the only free agent whose wallet could end up taking a hit.
Braden Holtby, who has been wrestling Ilya Samsonov for the starting goalie’s job in Washington, had been hoping to use these playoffs to prove that he is worthy of a contract similar to the seven-year, $70-million deal that Sergei Bobrovsky signed in the off-season. A deep playoff run could have helped Cody Ceci erase what had been a mediocre-at-best season in Toronto, while Boston’s Torey Krug might have shown that he was worth top-pairing money with another trip to the final.
Ask Florida Panthers GM Dale Tallon to analyze the play of pending free agents Mike Hoffman and Evgenii Dadonov, and the first word that comes out of his mouth is “inconsistent.”
Tallon might not have been saying that if the season wasn’t put on hold and they had helped the Panthers to the playoffs. But now, what you see is what you get.
“It seems our whole team has been in that mould,” Tallon said in a phone conversation on Thursday. “They’ve been good. Lately, prior to the postponing of everything, we had been playing well. And Hoffman had been one of our better players.”
Would Hoffman, who has eight goals in his past 11 games, have continued that pace in the final weeks of the season to lead Florida into the playoffs? Would Hall have willed the Coyotes into a wild-card berth and more?
We don’t know. An incomplete season equals an incomplete evaluation at a critical time in the schedule. Players are not paid during the post-season, but in a lot of ways the playoffs are when they make their future earnings. That’s where this stoppage hurts. And that, along with not knowing what the cap is going to look like next year, is why teams aren’t using this time to sit down and negotiate new player contracts.
“We’re not sure what’s going to happen here,” said Tallon. I’ve talked to the agents in the past, but not for a while now. There’s so many questions. We have plans, but you’re playing fantasy.
“The league doesn’t know. The agents don’t know. We’re ready for every possibility. But the uncertainty of all this is not allowing us to move forward.”
For Hall and the other bigname free agents, it could mean an off-season like no other.