NHL teams, restricted free agents in limbo
The 2019 summer crop of NHL restricted free agents could make for tons of cabbage by autumn.
Toronto’s Mitch Marner, 22, Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point, 23, and Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen, 22,
combined for 237 points last season. And then there’s Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine, 21, who through his first three seasons has highlightreeled in 110 goals.
Among defensemen, there is Boston’s Charlie Mcavoy, 21 … and there is the Blue Jackets’ Zach Werenski, 22, whose stats match up with numbers put up at the outset of Erik Karlsson’s first three years, or Drew Doughty’s.
Karlsson and Doughty are now 29 years old. Karlsson has won two Norris Trophies. Doughty has won one Norris and two Stanley Cups. They are the highestpaid defensemen in the league, the one at $11.5 million per and the other at $11 million per. They are both signed through the 2026-27 season.
We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here, but if you are a general manager, even of the armchair variety, you have to think in the long term as well as the short.
If you are Jarmo Kekalainen, you have to think about whether you want a bridge deal for Werenski, or whether you want to go long-term, and for how much. And if you are Werenski or his agent, you have to be thinking about what contract structure will lead to the greatest capitalization of the player’s assets.
P.K. Subban’s case is instructive. He signed a two-year bridge contract in 2012, won a Norris Trophy the next season, scored 53 points the season after that — and signed an eight-year, $72 million extension with the Montreal Canadiens in 2014. Ultimately, it was a contract the Canadiens did not want, so they traded Subban to Nashville in 2018. In time, it was a contract Nashville did not want, either, and the Predators traded him to the New Jersey Devils at the draft in June.
Subban, 30, is the third-highest-paid defenseman in the league. He has three years remaining at $9 million per. And he is on the other side of his prime, as is Karlsson, as is Doughty.
Werenski is entering his prime. His “problem,” for lack of a better word, is one of leverage. He does have some — leverage, that is: He’s a top-pair defenseman; his offensive numbers are impressive for such a young player; he’s priority No. 1 for the Jackets, who just lost a raft of top-flight talent to free agency; and the chance of another team swooping in with an offer sheet, while remote, remains a possibility.
How are negotiations going? About as well as they are with forwards Marner, Point, Rantanen, Laine, Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk, Winnipeg’s Kyle Connor and with defenseman Mcavoy and his mate Brandon Carlo, and Philadelphia’s Ivan Provorov, et al.
These are restricted free agents without arbitration rights. In their cases, as Kekalainen has often said, management has the hammer. (The players, as Blue Jackets fans know well, get the hammer when they reach unrestricted free agency. Don’t you miss Bread already?)
If you are a Jackets fan, you’d like to think a long-term agreement can be arranged for Werenski. You’d like to think that both sides could reach some consensus of what is fair. Maybe they will. To this point, there is no indication of contention and training camp is nearly seven weeks in the future. Longtime executive Lou Lamoriello, who now runs the New York Islanders, has a saying that goes something like this: Take all the time you need.
Of course, Jackets fans recall how impasses in secondcontract negotiations compelled Ryan Johansen and Josh Anderson to sit out training camp. I don’t think the Werenski negotiations are headed for those shoals, but we shall see.
What is happening in Columbus is what is happening in other cities with big-time restricted free agents. Everyone is waiting for one of them to sign. General managers don’t want to set a bar that is perceived to be too high. Agents and members of the players union don’t want to set a bar that is perceived to be too low. The market is in stasis.
marace@dispatch.com @Michaelarace1