Probably one of the least interesting events during hockey
offseason, aside from Sidney Crosby's misadventures at the DMV, is the cycle of
RFAs. Unlike the near-live auction frenzy associated with their unrestricted
counterparts, the RFA game is more akin to a chess match with far fewer pieces
and moves.
On one end of things, you have the players who are eligible
for salary arbitration. Depending on the age the player was when they signed
their Entry Level Contract, they must have three or four seasons of ten or more
games played in the NHL before they can elect to file for arbitration. If,
conversely, an NHL team would like to take a player to an arbitrator over a
contract, that player must have made $1.75 million or more in the final year of
the expiring contract. And at the end of it all, either what the arbitrator
says goes or the team can walk away from the award and the player becomes
unrestricted.
It’s no secret that the NHL despises the process of
arbitration but gosh darn it the system works. The whole point of it is to
figure out a fair price for a player using mainly their past production as
evidence and holding that up to other players around the league who signed
contracts at similar stages of their careers. I guess NHL owners don’t enjoy
being told what to do with their money.
But the reason arbitration works is that the overwhelming
majority of cases end up being settled before the third party is brought into
the discussion. All 21 scheduled hearings this year as well as all 17 hearings
from the previous year never came to pass due to players and teams striking
deals prior. Arbitration itself can be messy because each side of the argument
will present the best case possible in their favour, and relationships can be
fractured. Why risk all that and face the impending ultimatum when you could
play nice and reach an agreement like civilized adults?
For those who do not have the privilege of this process,
things get a little trickier. Salary Arbitration in a sense forces the team
that still owns your rights to make a decision about your status in the
organization. It somewhat implies that they have space under the cap to keep
you unless their qualifying offer and your counter-offer are miles apart. But
if this isn’t available to you, you are more at the mercy of what your team
wants to offer you. To a point this is reasonable because players coming off of
two- or three-year ELCs don’t have the résumés built up that older players do
and are therefore negotiating based on potential and not necessarily proven
ability.
The first option here is to negotiate for a short term deal,
typically something along the lines of a one- or two-year "show me"
deal or "bridge" contract. Maybe you had a breakout year at some
point in your first contract and the owner wants to see if you can maintain the
level of production you put up and are worth investing more time and money in. General
Managers also use this tactic to keep you on the cheap through a good portion
of your early years while still being able to buy up the first few UFA years
that usually kick in somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 years of age.
The second option is to holdout for a better offer which is
most often seen with truly elite talent. This was a tactic used by P.K. Subban
of Montreal and Ryan O'Reilly of Colorado this year. Part of the reason it took
so long to sign them was the uncertainty revolving around the labour dispute
and their respective GMs hesitating to commit to anything when issues like
salary cap and contract lengths hung in the balance. But for the seven year
periods between lockouts, RFAs have until December 1st of each year to hammer
out a contract or they will not be allowed to dress in the NHL for the
remainder of that season.
While the hold out can be highly effective, it can also be a
fairly big gamble because the subtext is that the team is not as effective as
it could be without you in the lineup. Subban definitely made use of his
holdout, sitting for six games before signing on for two seasons at $2.875
million per year. While this came in at a bargain for the Canadiens, he proved
his commitment to the organization while coming in at second on the team in
points and power play goals en route to a Norris Trophy. It is no doubt that he
will command a king's ransom when contract negotiations begin again for him.
The third option, in theory, is to sign an offer sheet from
one of the other 29 clubs in the league. I say 'in theory' because this tactic
has been virtually abandoned by most General Managers in the NHL. Offer sheets
are seen as a form of poaching on teams with lower internal budgets by those
with deep pockets, as evidenced by the Shea Weber saga of last summer.
Typically, the team of the offer-sheeted player will puff out their chest and
declare that they will match any offer made to their asset and are stuck with
the financial repercussions once they do, no matter how ridiculous.
The realization that offer sheets are pretty much obsolete
is somewhat depressing because it removes leverage from the players when
contract negotiations come to a halt. The idea behind these things being taboo
is that it damages relationships between General Managers because one GM is
forcing the hand of another beyond their ideal situation with the player in
question. An offer sheet is almost always a means of overpayment, pressuring
the initial club to decide within a week if the player is worth that many
zeroes to the organization. I guess GMs are not known to let these kinds of
things go.
However, the problem I see with this whole mentality is that
General Managers are constantly screwing each other over while driving up
player salaries anyways. So why does an offer sheet, in which the team that
declines to match receives explicitly laid out and relatively reasonable
compensation, have such stigma to it?
Every season there
is probably at least one blatantly one-sided trade that leaves the hockey world
thoroughly baffled. And every season there are players who are grossly overpaid
on new contracts compared to their level of production and ice time which
drives up the value for pending free agents. The General Managers are the ones
who set market values and with all estimates predicting the salary cap to
continue on an upward trend, a modest overpayment now may turn into a bargain in
the future.
The cap did backpedal this season which is a given due to
the new CBA. I understand that some teams have to get a little creative in
dealing with new contracts, but there are still some names on the RFA list that
are a little surprising as to why they have not been signed yet. Alex
Pietrangelo of St. Louis, Mikkel Boedker of Phoenix, Derek Stepan of the N.Y.
Rangers, Cody Hodgson of Buffalo, Nazem Kadri of Toronto, and Adam Henrique of
New Jersey all jump out at me as head-scratchers. If you factor in the notion
that each of these teams has the space under the cap to sign these players to
fair deals and not much time before training camp, one has to start wondering
if we will be seeing a good deal of holdouts to start the year.
Before we officially hit the panic button, let's assume that
most of these situations will be spoken for by the time the puck drops at 7:00
PM Eastern Time on October 1st. GMs want to hang on to their young, upper-level
players and the players want to play hockey (and make a lot of money doing it).
I know, that's not an interesting thing to read but when all the available
avenues are spelled out plainly, there isn't much you can do when what amounts
to collusion seems to trump the only Ace a player could pull if it was actually
dealt his way. As much as we love hockey and what the NHL has done to advance
this sport, the recent lockout serves to remind us that it is as much a
business as anything else.
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