Contracts for the Big-3
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bustaheims
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CarltonTheBear said:
Yup. I'm gonna take it with the largest amount of the saltiest salt I can safely ingest.
I am not convinced the cap will infinitely grow. I am rooting for Dubas in this one. I want to see something signed starting with a 6. Wait it out and get him signed at a decent number. Although I don't like it, the Leafs have the depth to wait it out.
$6M would be awesome, $7M would hurt and $8M would be hard to swallow.
$6M would be awesome, $7M would hurt and $8M would be hard to swallow.
Kin
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Bates said:
Teams can counter with whatever they want. That said, the Leafs are always going to be dealing with the reality that it's much easier for Nylander to find another team than it is for them to find another Nylander.
Also, Nylander is a full year younger and with a significantly better career PPG than Scheifele was when he signed his extension. So it's maybe not the best comparison for the Leafs even if they did want to go that route.
Zee
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Let's lots of comparables better than Draisaitl. Ehlers, and Pastrnak being 2.Bates said:
At least we haven't heard any "official" complaining from the agent or anything which would signal things aren't good. Once they start leaking messages through the press you know things aren't going well and they're trying to apply external pressure. The silence tells me they're at least working through it and it'll get done amicably
Kin
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Zee said:
I can see why the Leafs would be eager to use the Pastrnak comparison but I don't see the Ehlers comparison as being all that different than Draisaitl. To my mind that still puts Nylander in the 6.5-7.5 range even if you want to discount the idea that Nylander is worth more in Toronto.
Zee
Active member
How so? Draisaitl and Ehlers both signed last year, one was 8x8.5 while one was 7x6. Ehlers's stats are closer to Nylander's than either Draisaitl or Pastrnak and he only signed for $6M. Even with the cap going up since last year the absolute top of Nylander's cap should be $6.5Nik the Trik said:
Kin
New member
Zee said:
Well, "stats" are are a pretty broad concern. But ok, let's compare the year Ehlers had just had when he signed his extension with the year Nylander just had.
Ehlers: 25 g, 39 a, 64 p
Nylander: 21 g, 40 a, 61 p
On the surface, very comparable I would agree. I think with a little digging though there's very real reason to think of Nylander's year as better. For starters, there's ice time. Ehlers did that getting roughly a minute more ice time per game and, for the season, getting roughly 33% more PP time than Nylander did.
Then there's linemates. In 2016-2017 Ehlers split his time sort of evenly between three different groupings. There was Wheeler and Scheifele, Laine and Scheifele and Laine and Little.
I think we could both agree that the first two there are slightly better than Matthews and Hyman and the second one is, at the very least, comparable.
Of course, that forgets that Matthews missed 20 games last year. In those 20 games Nylander bounced around between Kadri and Komarov and Marleau and Hyman. So for at least a quarter of the season I think it's fair to say Ehlers was playing on a significantly better line.
(this also applies to the PP where Ehlers was with Laine, Scheifele and Wheeler while Nylander was with Matthews, Marleau and Komarov/Brown)
So offensively, I really think you have to give a fair edge to Nylander there.
Then there are the peripheral numbers. Possession numbers, as I understand them, are pretty close. I'm not much for +/- but Nylander was a +20 and Ehlers a +1. Ehlers, who was used very much as a traditional wing, only took 4 face-offs all season and lost all of them. Nylander took 650 face-offs and acquitted himself pretty well for a young player, winning 51.4% of them. Nylander followed it up with a not-great playoffs but he still scored one more playoff goal than Ehlers ever has.
So I think generally speaking Nylander had a reasonably better year. Definitely enough that I think he has a fair case for more money than Ehlers even before factoring in the inflation of the cap.
But I think it's the last point about face-offs that's the bigger issue. Nylander is, arguably, playing out of position. From some of what we've seen of him, I have some real confidence that he can not only be a C, but that he can handle the position in the face-off circle and in all three zones.
I've made this point before but to me it's a case of the Leafs trying to have their cake and eat it too here. You can't choose to play someone who's maybe more of a natural C on the wing because it helps the team and then when it's time to negotiate a contract balk at paying him C money because you chose to play him on the wing.
Or, I mean, you can certainly try to do that but I don't know how that would fly with a smart agent.
Kin
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Bates said:
That "leverage" really just comes in the form of being able to match an offer sheet. And if Nylander were to sign an 8 million dollar offer sheet somewhere the compensation for the Leafs if they didn't match would only be a 1st, 2nd and 3rd so I think Nylander would be pretty confident that they'd match.
So I don't really see it as a lot of leverage. Especially when losing Nylander would be a lot more damaging to the Leafs than it would be to Nylander.
Kin
New member
Bates said:
Even if it's true that the Leafs couldn't afford Nylander at 8, and I'm not sure it is, it certainly wouldn't be true until next year. In which case I think it'd be much smarter for the Leafs to match the offer sheet and then trade him next year when I think you could do much better than that collection of picks, especially when the Leafs would have no control over what team they got those picks from.
Although in either case, Nylander gets his 8m a year and the Leafs would have trouble recouping fair value so...not much in the way of leverage.
I think we would have already seen an offer sheet if one was coming so I will stick to my assertion that the Leafs have the leverage and Nylander really has little ability to do anything about it. Interesting thought on the match and trade, it comes with some risk though.
Nik the Trik said:
Kin
New member
Bates said:
The problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes that offer sheets are unilateral actions on the part of other teams that are likely to come unsolicited. I think it's probably far more likely that teams wouldn't make that offer unless they knew that a player was serious about signing one.
Luckily, so far, it doesn't look like Nylander wants to go in that route but I'm pretty confident that if he did, and other teams thought the Leafs wouldn't match an offer in that 6-8 million range, that he could get one pretty quickly.
That said though, I think the fact that we haven't heard about Nylander wanting to explore other avenues means he's probably not that far apart and everyone's still fairly optimistic a deal can get done.
Almost half the teams in the League don't have the picks required to make an offer sheet. I'm not sure there are many teams able to make the offer who own their picks, have the Cap Space, and the need to step up for Nylander. Combine the 3 and it's easy to see why offer sheets rarely happen.
Kin
New member
Bates said:
I think there are enough that make it a real possibility. Vegas, Colorado, Vancouver(who definitely will have an opening), Montreal, New Jersey(they'd have to reacquire their 3rd round pick but that's doable), Carolina, Arizona(although that seems unlikely).
And those are just the teams that have that cap space free and clear. If you include teams who could pretty easily free up the cap space if they thought Nylander was legitimately available you're probably be looking at anywhere from 10-12 teams.
I've made the case before but I really think the reason you don't see offer sheets is that they don't work. The compensation is too low. Teams are much better off just matching.
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