Barrie’s big payday will come ... eventually
Under normal circumstances, if the hockey business and the world around it were operating under even the rough outlines of the status quo, Wednesday would have been a way station of sorts for Tyson Barrie.
It would have marked six weeks until the traditional opening of NHL free agency on July 1. And unless Barrie and his team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, somehow found themselves making a deep run into the NHL playoffs — something the club hasn’t done in most of two decades — the focus of his hockey-related life would have been on the concerns of simpler times. Remember when Toronto fixated itself on the finer points of the contracts of hockey players? Barrie and his representatives, and by extension the rest of the hockey-loving city, would have been discussing the details of what promised to be the biggest contract of Barrie’s life. After playing more than 500 NHL games and toiling in the world’s best league for the bulk of nine seasons, Barrie would have been on the precipice of a significant career milestone — specifically, his first crack at unrestricted free agency. Sadly, things have changed.
“It’s a weird time to be heading into free agency, that’s for sure,” Barrie was saying on
Wednesday, speaking from his home in Victoria on a conference call with reporters.
It was only last summer that Barrie’s camp was whispering about their client scoring an eight-year contract worth about $8 million (U.S.) a season. Alas, not only did Barrie and Toronto prove to be a not-so-perfect match during his 70 games as a Maple Leaf — this after he arrived last summer as the centrepiece of the ill-fated trade that sent Nazem Kadri to Colorado and immediately plunged into a slump that only ended when Mike Babcock was fired as head coach after 23 games.
And not only has Barrie so far been denied the chance to make up for a forgettable regular season with some timely impact in the post-season, where just last year he played an average of 24 minutes a night into the second round with the Colorado Avalanche.
The coronavirus, while it’s ravaged the global economy, has removed a yet-to-be-determined but undeniably significant sum from hockey’s multibillion-dollar revenue pool. Which is a first-world problem, for sure, but also means that, to put it simply, the timing couldn’t be worse to find oneself on the open market.
“It’s one of those things where you work a long time to get to the point where you’re a free agent and teams want you,” Barrie said. “For sure there’ve been moments where it seems a little dire.”
Which is not to say the 28year-old Barrie is feeling particularly sorry for himself. Given that he’s already racked up career earnings in the range of $28 million as an adult playing a kids’ game, the veteran defenceman said it’s important to view the extent of his alleged misfortune in appropriate measure.
“There’s people who are losing jobs, and I think we all know what’s going on (with the pandemic). So to keep that in perspective, for me, is big,” Barrie said. “It’ll all sort itself out. (Free agency) might be a couple of months later, whatever the case. But at the end of the day, I’m very glad and very fortunate to play a sport and make a good living doing it.”
When he’ll next play is anyone’s guess. But Barrie said it’s his belief that both the league and the players’ association remain “pretty dedicated” to finding a way to name a Stanley Cup champion. Barrie acknowledged the proposed summertime playoff tournament won’t resemble a “perfect, classic NHL playoffs.” But given the circumstances, he said, he’s more than fine with a one-off exception to the annual rule. And he’s not concerned that the integrity of the game will take a hit.
“The integrity will be there, because it’s still going to be the best players in the world playing against each other for the ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup,” he said.
On Wednesday, Barrie posited that the Maple Leafs, with their combination of speed and skill and youth, would be wellpositioned to emerge from the current pause in relatively full flight. And as difficult as this season has been he spoke with optimism about the role he might play in that prospective liftoff.
In the opening 23 games of the season under Babcock, Barrie didn’t score a goal while contributing just seven assists. But since Babcock was replaced with Sheldon Keefe — six months ago Wednesday, as a matter of fact — Barrie has led Toronto’s defence corps with 32 points in 47 games.
“(Keefe is) an incredibly intelligent hockey mind, and he just encouraged me to skate with it, move the puck, get our forwards the puck, but jumping in and holding onto the puck and getting active in the (offensive) zone,” Barrie said.
“That’s kind of what I’ve done my whole career. So to have a coach come and try to give me the confidence to do it, and get that confidence back … you could see the first couple of weeks when we had (Keefe), we had a little more jump to us, and a little more offence. It works well with my game.”
Given Toronto’s perennial cap crunch and an NHL revenue swoon that figures to doom the long-held hope of a rising salary ceiling, Barrie doesn’t figure to be in the Maple Leafs’ long-term plans. But he said he’s optimistic he’ll don the sweater again in the months to come. There remain myriad obstacles to the hubcity playoff scheme the NHL continues to contemplate, including the prospect of asking players with families to leave home for weeks or months at a time. Barrie has yet to start a family of his own. And though he said he sympathizes with fellow NHLers who’d be facing the prospect of leaving their wives and kids for potentially extended stretches, he said “there might have to be some sacrifices made.”
In other words, finding a way to mitigate the pandemicinduced loss of revenue won’t come without its own costs. But pro sports is a business, in the end. And nobody understands that more urgently than the man who, in a different world, would be a mere six weeks away from the freeagent windfall of a lifetime.