2019 Free Agency Thread (Non-Sabres)

[Sabel79]

1 minute ago, Let's Go B-Lo said:

Nah, he's rich. Just keep spitting fire Tom!

 

Why is this all I can think of?

[Hoss]

39 minutes ago, Sabel79 said:

Dundon needs some savvy media advisers, or a timeout. 

Why? I think he’s on a roll.

[Sabel79]

Just now, Hoss said:

Why? I think he’s on a roll.

He's just making it worse for himself when he inevitably plummets off the tower his hubris is building.  YMMV I suppose, but it's just unnecessary and exposing so much surface area for things to bite him. 

[Sabel79]

Plus which, I don't think he understands that it's not necessarily a stroke of genius to let the other 30 GM's set his team's contracts for him.  Darcy Regier could do that.  

[Taro T]

49 minutes ago, Derrico said:

This doesn’t make any sense at all though.  Why would you let another team do the ‘dirty work’ and dicatate the terms of a massive agreement you will have to honour?  Even if you’re an inexperienced and frankly dumb owner nobody would do this.

Waddell just looking for a way to make this look less bad than it is.  Yes, they (courtesy of Bergevin) got him down $1MM/ year on the 5 year ask, but he still turns UFA after only 5 more years.

And the owner that makes Golisano look reckless now has to have over $11MM available to go out the door within the next 2 weeks.  Certain he has it, but he might have to do some finagling to have that much liquid cash available over whatever he'd already expected to have available.

It's called damage control & there's only so much you can do sometimes.

[DarthEbriate]

13 minutes ago, Sabel79 said:

Plus which, I don't think he understands that it's not necessarily a stroke of genius to let the other 30 GM's set his team's contracts for him.  Darcy Regier could do that.  

Setting the market on naming Hurrricanes' salaries, as it were.

[Sabel79]

I have the distinct impression that had MTL or anybody else put in an actual serious offer sheet Dundon would have walked away from he'd be on the golf course crowing about how big a win all the draft picks were.  

[Brawndo]

5 minutes ago, Sabel79 said:

I have the distinct impression that had MTL or anybody else put in an actual serious offer sheet Dundon would have walked away from he'd be on the golf course crowing about how big a win all the draft picks were.  

10.5 Million would have cost Montreal two firsts, a second and a third. 

It would have worked. 

[Taro T]

4 minutes ago, DarthEbriate said:

Setting the market on naming Hurrricanes' salaries, as it were.

Would've been interesting to see if the Canes would've matched an offer at the upper end of the 2x1, 1x2, 1x3 compensation bracket.  (A smidge over Aho 's $9.5MMx5 original ask IIRC.)

They've looked even sillier with their 'we let the other teams set the market' garbage at any rate.

IMHO, expect that they would've let him walk for a 4x1 offer.  Really don't have a good feel for whether a $9.5MM-ish offer would've been matched.

[DarthEbriate]

1 minute ago, Taro T said:

Would've been interesting to see if the Canes would've matched an offer at the upper end of the 2x1, 1x2, 1x3 compensation bracket.  (A smidge over Aho 's $9.5MMx5 original ask IIRC.)

They've looked even sillier with their 'we let the other teams set the market' garbage at any rate.

IMHO, expect that they would've let him walk for a 4x1 offer.  Really don't have a good feel for whether a $9.5MM-ish offer would've been matched.

Exactly. If they had full knowledge of Aho's original asking price, a good play was to match that, or even exceed it by a super narrow margin, knowing CAR had already balked. If 9.5x5 was too much for CAR, then offer 9.7. The extra 1st round pick is a loss, but if he's your guy --- make him your guy. Show him you love him! Montreal played too conservative in this respect.

That said, now Aho is on the market sooner and is likely to get traded as well (ROR style with Colorado).

[Derrico]

19 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Waddell just looking for a way to make this look less bad than it is.  Yes, they (courtesy of Bergevin) got him down $1MM/ year on the 5 year ask, but he still turns UFA after only 5 more years.

And the owner that makes Golisano look reckless now has to have over $11MM available to go out the door within the next 2 weeks.  Certain he has it, but he might have to do some finagling to have that much liquid cash available over whatever he'd already expected to have available.

It's called damage control & there's only so much you can do sometimes.

Right.  But again, why would you not dictate the terms?  If he doesn't want to pay $11 mil in the next two weeks then he should have negotiated the deal.  If he's prepared to match anything then I don't understand the logic of allowing another GM to set the max price and most uncomfortable conditions possible. 

[DarthEbriate]

9 minutes ago, Brawndo said:

10.5 Million would have cost Montreal two firsts, a second and a third. 

It would have worked. 

It'll work. It'll work.

[Curt]

4 minutes ago, DarthEbriate said:

Exactly. If they had full knowledge of Aho's original asking price, a good play was to match that, or even exceed it by a super narrow margin, knowing CAR had already balked. If 9.5x5 was too much for CAR, then offer 9.7. The extra 1st round pick is a loss, but if he's your guy --- make him your guy. Show him you love him! Montreal played too conservative in this respect.

That said, now Aho is on the market sooner and is likely to get traded as well (ROR style with Colorado).

I would be a little surprised if Aho was traded.  1) He can’t be traded in the next calendar year.  2) He is due to make something like $21M in that 1st calendar year.  

So after the first year, Aho’s contract will actually be rather cheap.  Doesn’t really help to trade him at that point.  He’ll be owed only about $21M over the last 4 years.

[shrader]

Just now, Curtisp5286 said:

I would be a little surprised if Aho was traded.  1) He can’t be traded in the next calendar year.  2) He is due to make something like $21M in that 1st calendar year.  

So after the first year, Aho’s contract will actually be rather cheap.  Doesn’t really help to trade him at that point.  He’ll be owed only about $21M over the last 4 years.

But traded prior to hitting the UFA market in 5 years.  If he stays on current track and that ownership remains in place at that point, there's no way they'll pay his market rate.

[DarthEbriate]

Just now, Curtisp5286 said:

I would be a little surprised if Aho was traded.  1) He can’t be traded in the next calendar year.  2) He is due to make something like $21M in that 1st calendar year.  

So after the first year, Aho’s contract will actually be rather cheap.  Doesn’t really help to trade him at that point.  He’ll be owed only about $21M over the last 4 years.

Oh, I mean in the final year or so --- he'll be a deadline or draft day move before his next contract --- because if he continues upward, then he will be a 10M+. Purely speculation.

What @shrader said. Beat me to it.

[Curt]

Just now, shrader said:

But traded prior to hitting the UFA market in 5 years.  If he stays on current track and that ownership remains in place at that point, there's no way they'll pay his market rate.

Ah, ok.  Yes, maybe 4 years from now in order to not lose him for nothing.  That’s possible.

[Derrico]

4 minutes ago, shrader said:

But traded prior to hitting the UFA market in 5 years.  If he stays on current track and that ownership remains in place at that point, there's no way they'll pay his market rate.

Oh for sure.  But if ownership pays out a big chunk of this contract in dollars over the next two weeks, I could see them wanting to wait until atleast year 5 before considering a trade.

[Taro T]

33 minutes ago, Derrico said:

Right.  But again, why would you not dictate the terms?  If he doesn't want to pay $11 mil in the next two weeks then he should have negotiated the deal.  If he's prepared to match anything then I don't understand the logic of allowing another GM to set the max price and most uncomfortable conditions possible. 

This IS Don friggin' Waddell we're talking about and arguably the cheapest owner in the league.  Really doubt either was bright enough to see this sort of offer for less than Aho's original ask happening.

They tried to get him to sign a deal THEY were comfortable with, but Aho flat out said no. 

I fully expect they were going to walk away from a 4x1 compensation offer & after having thought about it a bit, expect they'd've walked from a 1,1,2,3 compensation deal as well.  Waddell gave it away yesterday - he was surprised the offer came in as low as it was and the owner was out golfing and couldn't be reached.  Had the offer been larger, they already had their reply to the media set.  But they couldn't walk away from this.  Moe-ray-all hosed them.  They now either have to spend much more cash than they wanted to on the team as a whole and keep the whole team or get closer to what they'd budgeted and lose a good player or 2.

Wondering if Moe-ray-all is still bitter about the Williams high stick all these years later.  Also, wondering why Moe-ray-all didn't go a bit higher on the offer.

[Derrico]

6 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Wondering if Moe-ray-all is still bitter about the Williams high stick all these years later.  Also, wondering why Moe-ray-all didn't go a bit higher on the offer.

They must of believed this is all it would have taken to get it done.  Still shocking they didn't go a bit higher.  In this offer Carolina would barely get any assets back.  You're right in that I bet if it was a deal that involved 4 1st the thinking would have changed.  Question is: did Montreal try calling their bluff and got it wrong?  Why wouldn't they have made this more difficult to match with more dollars/higher cap hit?  Worried about their own cap situation too I guess.

[Sabel79]

13 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Also, wondering why Moe-ray-all didn't go a bit higher on the offer.

Marc. *****. Bergevin. 

[LTS]

Everything I am reading points to the agent using a relationship with Bergevin to help his cause and ultimately put more pressure on Tampa.  

 

[WildCard]

1 minute ago, LTS said:

Everything I am reading points to the agent using a relationship with Bergevin to help his cause and ultimately put more pressure on Tampa.  

Tampa?

[WildCard]

The Canes officially match Montreal's offer, meaning Toronto and Tampa are ecstatic, and I have yet another reason to hate Montreal 

[TrueBlueGED]

22 minutes ago, WildCard said:

The Canes officially match Montreal's offer, meaning Toronto and Tampa are ecstatic, and I have yet another reason to hate Montreal 

I honestly don't understand why Bergevin thought such a low AAV would work. High AAV and thus higher bonuses was the only way it had a chance. 

[Taro T]

5 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

I honestly don't understand why Bergevin thought such a low AAV would work. High AAV and thus higher bonuses was the only way it had a chance. 

1 bad GM overestimated how cheap another bad GM's owner actually was.  (Don't care that Waddell was a finalist for hardware this year; lots of bad GM's before him were as well.)