The William Nylander saga may just be the tip of the iceberg on the NHL landscape.
One player agent mentioned to me earlier this season that there would be two to three Nylander-style contract stalemates next fall.
“Absolutely,” said another agent this past weekend. “In fact, it could be more than that.”
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Gulp.
Many people on both sides of the fence are eyeing this year’s crop of high-end youngsters on expiring entry-level deals with tremendous fascination. Patrik Laine, Brayden Point, Auston Matthews, Mikko Rantanen, Mitch Marner, Matthew Tkachuk, Kyle Connor, Sebastian Aho, Timo Meier, Brock Boeser, and there are more, are all on expiring entry-level deals.
“This is a unique grouping of top young players and they’re all having great years,” said an Eastern Conference team executive. “The agents are not in a rush and I think everything will be a reaction off of the first of these guys to sign. Not sure they’ll be willing to do bridge deals either but some teams will have to.”
I’ve been talking about this on TSN since September and my colleague Eric Duhatschek had a terrific take on it in his weekend notebook. As a follow to his piece, I reached out to agents and front office personnel around the league to get a balanced perspective on how they view this playing out.
“It is the next big battleground for the league,” one Eastern Conference team said via text. “The days of good players signing second contracts in the $6-6.7 M range looks to be over. Nylander is fighting to get above Pastrnak. The whole market will reset over the next few months.”
“There’s a total market shift happening right now,” said one player agent.
Why?
Many on both sides point to Leon Draisaitl’s $8.5-million a year deal in Edmonton and to Jack Eichel’s $10-million per year deal in Buffalo, both coming out of entry-level deals.
That’s the obvious financial comparison.
But there’s perhaps a bigger picture explanation, too. One agent said he’s planning on studying this further over the next few months but he wonders if there simply isn’t a deeper list of high-end, entry-level players coming into the league and making the kind of immediate impact we normally would have seen only a handful of players make.
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“Where maybe it used to be Crosby and Ovechkin being able to do that as entry-level players from their class, now we’re seeing a slew of them,” argued the agent.
Which is to say, sure you’ve got your generational talents like Connor McDavid, Eichel, Matthews and Laine doing their thing, but there’s also an underlying wave of youngsters like Aho, Point, Tkachuk, Marner, Connor, Meier, Boeser, all doing the kind of things that perhaps players used to wait a few more years to develop into.
Some of that is how today’s young players get the kind of training and skill coaching prospects didn’t get a decade or more ago.
Regardless, it’s forcing NHL teams to perhaps more quickly recognize them financially, right out of their entry-level contracts instead of waiting for the third contract to make that commitment.
So the combination of that, with recent maximum-term second contracts signed have affected the system.
“McDavid, Draisaitl and Eichel really made future deals difficult for teams,” said one Eastern Conference team exec. “Young, stud-laden teams now have their windows starting to tighten as these stars hit the end of their ELCs. I liked it way better when Barkov, MacKinnon and others were all doing the six-year deals. Now we’ve accelerated the process. …That’s why Nylander is a bit of an important stand-off for both sides in my opinion. It’s a battle between the Pastrnak, MacKinnon, etc. style deals and the big three I mentioned above. The whole model of building a contender changes if we keep giving those out. In my opinion.”
All of which again comes back to Nylander and why all eyes have been on that negotiation.
“Those expiring players on entry-level contracts you mentioned are all waiting to see what Nylander gets to set the low end of that market,” said one agent on Sunday. “(A) lot of these higher-end guys are going to be above him. But he sets the basement for them.”
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Echoed a Western Conference team exec via text message: “All of these contracts are waiting on Nylander to see if marketplace gets reset (i.e. raised). Based on past contracts you would have expected these deals ranging from an AAV between 6-7 million. Now I think that number is going to be 7+.”
I’m not even sure how much Matthews and Laine will affect the market or not. They’re going to get what they’re going to get as special, franchise players. But it’s that next class led by Rantanen and Marner that intrigues the most.
“The top guys (Matthews and Laine) will obviously push to get beyond Eichel and in the McDavid area code,” said one Eastern Conference team exec via text message. “The next group will be the fascinating one. Marner and Rantanen will argue they are as good as Eichel, I assume. And the teams will push for Draisaitl as a comp. The result will be that top young guys coming out of EL will be getting contracts in the $8M and up range (instead of the $6M range). And, as a result, if more $ go to the younger players, we will see less $ available for Group 3 players. (Which will also create an interesting division/dynamic in the PA membership as we approach a new CBA negotiation).”
This is a really important point. Because no matter how much higher these salaries get on these second contracts, it’s almost of little concern to the NHL and owners.
“Bettman has the 50-50 revenue split with players no matter what,” said one agent.
No, the concern would be how these second contracts suck the money out of the system for other players. And the betting money, as the game gets younger and younger, that’s the Group 3 UFA in his early 30s that begins to get squeezed.
“And for sure the middle-class player, too,” added one agent.
I asked many of these agents and team execs about five specific second contracts on the horizon: Rantanen, Marner, Tkachuk, Connor and Boeser, all wingers.
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“North of 10 and work your way down,” one Western Conference team executive responded when I gave him the list of those five names.
When I went back to ask which order he would work down from, he said it began north of $10 million with Rantanen, then “Marner, Tkachuk, Connor and Boeser” in descending order.
One Eastern Conference team executive said term would be different for these five players in question.
“If it were me, Rantanen, Marner, Connor are all worth long-term deals at market value. …Boeser and Tkachuk are probably more of a bridge deal to see where they fall given some factors like shooting % abnormalities and style of play/hits taken/given profile,” he said via text message.
Boeser and Tkachuk were lumped together by a few others canvassed.
“Boeser and Tkachuk are similar,” said one player agent via text message. “My guess is that Van will commit 6-8 years to Boeser. At his current place, he’s going to be getting past Pastrnak and approaching Draisaitl. The problem with the Draisaitl contract is that it’s a bit of an outlier.”
Connor flies under the radar because of Laine’s next contract on the same club.
“Kyle Connor’s situation is interesting because Winnipeg has a lot of long-term commitments already (four forwards with six-plus years),” said another player agent. “That’s a lot to have locked up in your forward group. Having said that, he’s an important player for them. If they give him term, he’s going to move past Scheifele and Ehlers. But I wonder if they’re going to push a bridge like they did with Morrissey.”
Marner and Rantanen topped everyone’s list when asked.
“I think you will see Marner in Eichel territory and possibly Rantanen if he continues this level of play,” said an Eastern Conference team exec. “Rantanen will be tough on Col given the Mackinnon deal at $6.3 million.”
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Said a player agent: “To me the most complicated one is Rantanen. He’s obviously a monster, but can you pay him $3 million to $4 million a year more than MacKinnon without totally upsetting the balance of your team?”
Another player agent pointed that out, too, how the shifting marketplace will really hit home on some of these teams, Rantanen’s excellent contract timing getting him easily above his linemate MacKinnon, Tkachuk in Calgary is going to be above Sean Monahan/Johnny Gaudreau’s second contracts in Calgary, and then there’s Point in Tampa Bay.
“Brayden Point could easily end up making the same amount ($8.5 million) as Stamkos and Stamkos made that in a UFA year,” said one player agent.
Important to remember, however, is how each team with all these high-end RFAs are in different spots. Tampa Bay, Toronto and Winnipeg will have cap issues. Other teams have cash issues. It really depends in each case, and that affects every contract negotiation.
On top of that, there’s the desire of some teams to maximize cost certainty.
“A player’s best years are normally 23-29 on average,” said one Eastern Conference team exec. “Four of those years are normally RFA years…the key is to find the balance between expected production and the dollar today and the dollar tomorrow given the cap and other obligations.”
“The leaguewide marketplace has been set with a range of $6M to $8.5M over 6-8 years,” said a player agent. “All the players you mentioned will probably be shooting for a Draisatl like deal. If the goal is to solely maximize compensation, these players would all likely do better with shorter term deals not buying UFA years. Personally, I would love to see 2 or 3-year deals followed by another 2-3 year deal.
“The player will send up between 26-28 years of age hitting the UFA market on his prime. Can you spell T-A-V-A-R-E-S situation all over again? I don’t think he comes close to being the best player in the league but look at how teams were falling over themselves with blank checks.”
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And the chain of events with all these RFAs will be key, too.
“Some of this will depend on who signs when,” said one agent. “They do affect one another in some ways, and if one of them sets a new standard, especially if it’s a guy at the ‘bottom end’ of this group, it could have an upward push on the rest. The inverse is also true if Rantanen signs for ‘under market’ he could push the group down.”
Can all these high-end RFAs get signed before camp opens in September? And will we see an offer sheet?
Stay tuned, the 2019 NHL offseason is going to be mighty interesting.
(Top photo: John E. Sokolowski/USA TODAY Sports)