Maybe the Maple Leafs shouldn’t sign Marner
There’s no reason Mitch Marner should be able to demand the kinds of dollars he is demanding from the Maple Leafs.
Same goes for Matthew Tkachuk and the Flames, Brayden Point and the Lightning, Zach Werenski of Columbus, Kyle Connor and Patrik Laine of the Jets, Mikko Rantanen of Colorado and Brock Boeser of the Canucks.
We could go on. There are lots of restricted free agents yet to sign. What’s intriguing here, however, is that exactly none of these players have a speck of real leverage beyond an ability to withdraw their services from their NHL teams.
Yes, there’s the threat of offer sheets blah, blah, blah. Montreal wasted everyone’s time on Sebastian Aho, a naked public relations effort by GM Marc Bergevin to curry favour with Habs fans by making it appear he’s doing everything possible to make the team better.
Carolina, of course, just laughed at Montreal and matched the offer. Why would anyone else bother? San Jose was able to get restricted free-agent Timo Meier under contract, but had to nearly quadruple his contract after one 30-goal season.
Meier and Aho are exceptions. The most significant RFAs are behaving as if they have the leverage, not the teams. After William Nylander sat out and didn’t sign until the last moment with the Leafs last December, more than one player could go that route this season.
The fact, obviously, is that teams have surrendered leverage to these players. They didn’t even bargain it away. They just gave it away without a fight. Again.
Nearly three decades after rookie Eric Lindros became the highest-paid player in the NHL without playing a game, prompting a salary explosion across hockey and ultimately leading to the entry-level cap system that should protect teams from having to pay massive salaries to players with just a few years of NHL experience, the NHL is right back where it started.
Lindros got US$16.5 million for six years at a time when Hart Trophy winner Mark Messier was making $1.5 million. Now, 26-year-old Nikita Kucherov ($9.5-million cap hit) is the reigning Hart Trophy winner and, while he won’t get lapped like Messier did, it’s not impossible that players such as Marner, Tkachuk and Rantanen could get a salary equal to or greater than Kucherov’s.
Remember, Aho just got a deal that pays him an average of $8.45 million per year. Sidney Crosby, second in Hart voting, has six years left on a contract that comes with an average cap hit of $8.7 million.
So once again, the NHL is back in the business of paying players who have accomplished less in their careers more money than experienced players who have won multiple Stanley Cups and major awards.
This leaves us in a situation with all these terrific young players unsigned.
The Jets, who have already had to trade away Jacob Trouba because they couldn’t sign him, might be unable to get either Connor or Laine under contract. Point’s a real problem for Tampa, which also has to sign Adam Erne. Boston’s got to figure out how to sign defencemen Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo. The Flyers don’t have Ivan Provorov or Travis Konecny, both 22 years old, under contract.
We know the angst the Nylander situation caused in Toronto last year. That same situation could befall several teams this season unless some team decides to draw a line in the sand.
Indeed, many wonder if Toronto should have done that with Nylander last year. The Leafs were trying to win the Cup, of course, and believed they needed the player, but with 20/20 hindsight you could look back and argue that not signing Nylander would have been worth the sacrifice. You could make the same argument with Marner now.
These teams get squeezed because they are simultaneously in the business of making a profit and of winning, and agents have always been able to use the emotional component of the latter to get teams to do things that really aren’t in their interest.
It’s not like teams couldn’t call a halt to this crazy practice of awarding players with three years’ experience these massive new contracts.
Tampa could just refuse to give Point the gigantic raise he seeks, just like it shut down Jonathan Drouin. Calgary could do the same with Tkachuk, and so on. The players could play overseas, but not for the money they are demanding.
However, we know how that would play out. Fans would put pressure on the teams to get the players signed. Beyond that, the current collective agreement is in its final stages. The league can opt out of it on Sept. 1, and the players on Sept. 19.
You could argue teams will fight for more restrictions on players coming off entry-level deals in the next CBA, but there’s no guarantee they’ll get it, and clubs might prefer to get players signed under the terms of this deal.
So the likelihood is Point, Tkachuk and Marner will all get their money. But nobody wants to be the first to sign, and the contract signed by Auston Matthews this year that walks him into unrestricted free agency at age 26 has ceded yet more territory to RFAs, again without much of a fight.
Once the door has been opened, it’s hard to shut it again. NHL owners, however, rarely understand their own league’s history.
So they end up dealing with the same problems that were supposed to be solved decades ago.