Keeping Evander Kane is top priority for GM Wilson
Star should be a hot commodity on the NHL’s free agent market this summer
SAN JOSE >> Doug Wilson is used to getting hometown discounts from his players. He won’t be getting any bargain-basement deals from Evander Kane this summer.
Among the laundry list of items on the Sharks general manager’s to-do list this offseason will be figuring out how to re-sign Kane, whose acquisition at the trade deadline propelled his team into the Stanley Cup playoffs. Over the years, players such as Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau have re-signed at discounted rates to stay in teal. But Wilson will probably need to open up his wallet to keep Kane on board.
At age 26, Kane is entering his prime years and a maximum-term contract of seven years will take him to 33 (he could sign an eightyear extension with the Sharks). This is his time to get paid.
After “character issues” scared off potential buyers at the trade deadline, Kane took great strides toward repairing his reputation during his 10 weeks with the Sharks. At least a few teams will look at his blend of speed and physicality, along with his potential to put the puck in the net 30 or 40 times a season, and open up the vault.
Looking at comparable players, Kane should fetch a contract with an annual average salary in the $7 million to $8 million. If this is where the market is set, the Sharks should make every effort to lock him down, especially considering that the Toronto Maple Leafs are paying $6.25 per year to an aging Marleau.
With his speed and ability to score, Kane boasts a lot of Marleau’s attributes while playing with the edge that Mr. Shark so often lacked. If the Sharks can make that upgrade for an extra, say, $1.5 million per year, that’s a deal Wilson should take.
But the Sharks could run into trouble here if someone projects Kane’s future value at more than $8 million per year, which isn’t entirely out of the question. With a core that has been together for years, I can’t imagine that Wilson would be willing to make Kane the highest-paid player on the team after he spent just two-and-a-half months with the team.
• Speaking of pay raises, it will be interesting to see what the Sharks do with Tomas Hertl in restricted free agency this summer.
Hertl signed a teamfriendly two-year, $6 million contract in 2016, recognizing that he would get a better deal down the road if he could move past the knee issues that plagued him over the first three years of his career. After putting together his first trulyhealthy season, Hertl is emerging as a powerful force down low and a leader in the dressing room. His patience should pay off this summer.
Wilson is facing two options with Hertl. Both come with a degree of risk.
The Sharks could sign Hertl to a five-year contract as they did with Logan Couture and Justin Braun in past years and eat up three years of his eligibility for unrestricted free agency at a reasonable cost in the $5 million to $6 million range. The risk here is that the Sharks could be throwing money in the toilet for years if Hertl’s knee issues flare up again.
The other option is to play it safe. Sign Hertl to another two-year extension that takes him to unrestricted free agency in 2020. The downside is that if Hertl builds off the season he put together this winter, his price tag could soar by the time he hits the open market in two years.
• Chris Tierney will be eligible for a significant pay increase in restricted free agency as well.
Last summer, the Sharks played hardball with Tierney, making him prove his worth by signing him to a one-year contract at $735,000. The 23-year-old responded by adding strength in Gary Roberts’ training program over the summer and then he turned the hard work into results on the ice.
Tierney helped the Sharks fill the Marleau void by moving up to third-line center, which allowed Hertl to skate on Couture’s left wing. He validated the promotion by setting career highs with 17 goals and 40 points, which should earn him some extra cheese this summer.
• Joe Pavelski and Couture are eligible to sign contract extensions, but Wilson is sure to take different approaches with each player.
Couture will likely get the Marc-Edouard Vlasic treatment and receive an eight-year extension. He’s driving the bus now, he wants to stay with the Sharks; they need to lock him down for as long as possible.
Pavelski’s contract is a little trickier because he will be 35 years old in the first year of his next deal. The captain put together another strong season and he isn’t showing any signs of decline. If he gets off to another strong start, Wilson might consider giving him something like a three-year extension in season as he did with Thornton and Marleau in 2014.
• Coach Pete DeBoer will be back for another season. He probably deserves more job security than that.
It’s easy to nitpick DeBoer’s lineup decisions. He waited too long to replace Paul Martin with Joakim Ryan in the playoffs. He gave up on Ryan Carpenter a little too soon and never really gave Danny O’Regan a chance to succeed.
That said, he led a group that most experts saw as a bubble team into the second round of the playoffs without Marleau and Thornton in the second half. No one outside of Sharks Ice saw that coming.
At the end of the day, none of the aforementioned lineup decisions are responsible for the Sharks’ second-round elimination by the Vegas Golden Knights. Some might point out that Martin got burned on the winning goal in overtime of Game 3, but Ryan also got undressed by Alex Tuch on the third-period winner in Game 5.
From the outside, it’s easy to reduce a coach’s job to his nightly lineup choices because that’s what we can all see. There’s a lot more than goes into coaching a team than simply filling out the lineup card.
DeBoer’s best work takes place behind closed doors.
He commands the room’s respect by communicating in a direct manner, getting the most out of his players. Under DeBoer, the Sharks are hard, resilient and fearless. No one would have put those words into print four years ago after the team coughed up a 3-0 lead to the Los Angeles Kings.
DeBoer transformed a group of underachievers into overachievers. He has earned the opportunity to get paid, as well.