ENDANGERED SPECIES
Older players are becoming extinct in NHL
THE NHL has become no country for old men. The league-wide obsession with speed has hastened the natural evolutionary process. Older guys who can’t skate, like Patrick Marleau, are dinosaurs on brink of extinction.
According to hockey-reference.com, just 14 of the 30 skaters who were 36 or older as of Feb. 1 will be back on the ice in 2017-18, with Marian Hossa sidelined for the season with a progressive skin disorder.
The Tyrannosaurus rex of them all currently is at home in Kladno in the Czech Republic. Jaromir Jagr is a free agent, somehow without a contract offer following a 16-goal, 46-point season for the Panthers. Across the NHL last season, there was a total of 33 wingers to record both that many goals and that many assists. Thirty-two of them are guaranteed to be in the league this season.
Of course, none other than Jagr is 45 years old.
Of course, no one else is, has been, or ever will be Jagr — who very well could play in his sixth Olympics, 20 years after winning gold in Nagano.
We have it on good authority that Jagr was told at the end of the season by Florida management a contract offer would be forthcoming following the expansion draft, but then the pledge evaporated. Perhaps the change of heart followed the hiring of Bob Boughner as head coach.
Shawn Thornton chose retirement before it might have been chosen for him. Brian Campbell stepped away. Andrei Markov has taken his talents to Russia, from whence he conceivably could return following the Olympics.
Shane Doan remains unsigned, so does Jarome Iginla, and so do Matt Cullen, Mike Fisher and Brian Gionta. John-Michael Liles, Francois Beauchemin, Chris Kelly and Vern Fiddler don’t have contracts. Neither does Chris Neil, but he may be picking and choosing. And if Mike Ribeiro is done, it can’t be blamed exclusively on his birth date.
Marleau will start on his threeyear deal with the Maple Leafs. He will be joined in the league by 36’ers Zdeno Chara, Henrik Zetterberg, Henrik Sedin and coincidentally Daniel Sedin, too. Joe Thornton, Joel Ward, Chris Kunitz, Niklas Kronwall, Michal Rozsival, Brooks Orpik, Mark Streit and Jason Chimera will be back.
And Dominic Moore returns again, this time in Toronto, after his Smashfest fundraiser generated $665,000 for the Katie Moore (rare cancers) and the Steve Moore (concussions) Foundations. The league is a better place when people like Dominic Moore play in it.
But the NHL is skewing young and younger. The geezers are fast becoming an endangered species. And “fast” is the operative word.
Ondrej Palat and Mika Zibanejad avoided arbitration in signing nearly identical five-year contracts, Palat’s worth $5.3 million per season and Zibanejad’s in at $5.35 million per. But that is where the economic similarity ends.
Because — referring to the Gavin Management Group chart on its website, Gavingroup.ca — Tampa Bay’s Palat will owe approximately $670,000 less in taxes per year playing in Florida than Zibanejad will playing in New York.
That equals a total of around $3.35 million over the life of the contract. Maybe, just maybe, operating in a no-tax state has given Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman a little more heft with the hammer he likes to bring to the table.
And maybe, just maybe, NHL teams and the NHLPA will press Sixth Avenue to address this inequity during the next round of collective bargaining.
Right. Sure they will.
We understand the NHL is in the midst of what could be extremely costly litigation with players over past concussion practices and that may preclude the administration from speaking honestly about related current medical issues regarding the potential link of brain injury to sustaining head shots on the rink.
Though it is an impossible stretch to correlate the findings of the Boston University School of Medicine on the relationship between chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and the chronically violent sport of football to hockey, it is even more of a stretch for commissioner Gary Bettman to continue to be an outspoken skeptic on the matter of CTE and his sport.
This is the time for progressive leadership outside the courtroom. Players of all ages and in all leagues depend on it.
So $8 million per for Ryan Johansen in Nashville after $7.8 million per earlier in the signing season for Evgeny Kuznetsov in Washington. And do you know, in two summers, who will wield the biggest hammer of them all, and in the no-tax state of Florida against Yzerman, himself?
Nikita Kucherov, that’s who. He is now entering the second year of a three-year deal for $4.767 million per that he will more than double next time around as a restricted free agent with arbitration rights one year away from unrestricted free agency. Bank on it.
Of the 24-and-unders in the NHL, there is Connor McDavid, and for me, then there is Kucherov, ahead of Auston Matthews, Mark Scheifele, Patrik Laine, Leon Draisaitl, Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau.
Yzerman got Kucherov and got him good last time, taking advantage of the winger’s lack of salary arbitration rights and the Russian’s utter disinterest in using the KHL as a lone piece of leverage beyond sitting out last season. Yzerman, we’re told, refused to offer a two-year deal. Fact is, he wanted to lock up Kucherov for four or five years. But he and agent Scott Greenspun were able to hold that off.
Still, Kucherov changed agents after the season, signing on with Daniel Milstein of Gold Star Sports. Next time, Kucherov and Milstein will hold the hammer.
And they’re going to use it.