Mitch Marner: what now?

[TML fan]

I don't think it's that fans want Marner to acquiesce to Tanenbaum, it's that they want the extra dollars to improve the team.

As Herman said earlier, it's not like fans criticizing players for wanting to negotiate the best deal for themselves started with the cap. Fans so universally resenting players earning the money they do, and siding with the owners during the lockouts, is one of the primary reasons we have the cap in the first place.

It's pretty typical of the public to side against labour in labour disputes.

 

[Kin]

The Leafs have left themselves...

The operative words. Nobody forced them to give 4.5 million to Cody Ceci.

 

[Zee]

The Leafs have left themselves...

The operative words. Nobody forced them to give 4.5 million to Cody Ceci.

And they still have enough to pay Marner as a top 10 player in the league.  How much should he get, 20% of the cap? 

 

[Kin]

And they still have enough to pay Marner as a top 10 player in the league.  How much should he get, 20% of the cap?

Pretty clearly it's not a question of how much he should get because the entire league's financial structure is designed so that he doesn't have access to a real market for his skills. Within the context of the system it's a question of how much he can get and that is TBD. Clearly, what the Leafs are offering isn't enough to get him to sign right away and he's looking to either negotiate more money or a more favourable term.

Which, given that there is no current contractual relationship between him and the club is certainly something he's free to do. He's a free agent, free to sign with any team in any league in the world if he wants. He doesn't owe the Leafs anything.

 

[Zee]

And they still have enough to pay Marner as a top 10 player in the league.  How much should he get, 20% of the cap?

Pretty clearly it's not a question of how much he should get because the entire league's financial structure is designed so that he doesn't have access to a real market for his skills. Within the context of the system it's a question of how much he can get and that is TBD. Clearly, what the Leafs are offering isn't enough to get him to sign right away and he's looking to either negotiate more money or a more favourable term.

Which, given that there is no current contractual relationship between him and the club is certainly something he's free to do. He's a free agent, free to sign with any team in any league in the world if he wants. He doesn't owe the Leafs anything.

I never said he owed the Leafs anything, I said they have enough cap space to pay him like a top 10 player in the league which should be good enough.  Whether it's term or dollar is of no consequence to me, I think the Leafs have positioned themselves as best they can while still trying to ice a competitive team.  If his camp doesn't see it that way then great, he can aim for more, but at the end of the day any team in this salary cap system will eventually hit the same issues.

 

[Kin]

I never said he owed the Leafs anything, I said they have enough cap space to pay him like a top 10 player in the league which should be good enough.

Only if you accept the League's premise that what Mitch Marner earns should be intrinsically tied to the League's decision to put and keep a franchise in Arizona. The extent to which each player is going to accept that premise, which we'd legitimately never expect any other person in just about any other industry to accept, is going to be up to them.

 

[Zee]

I never said he owed the Leafs anything, I said they have enough cap space to pay him like a top 10 player in the league which should be good enough.

Only if you accept the League's premise that what Mitch Marner earns should be intrinsically tied to the League's decision to put and keep a franchise in Arizona. The extent to which each player is going to accept that premise, which we'd legitimately never expect any other person in just about any other industry to accept, is going to be up to them.

But that's the current reality.  Unless and until the league and players union comes up with a more fair system for player salaries, all teams are playing by the same rules.  Marner can go sign for the maximum money with another team, say Ottawa, and in a few years if Ottawa improves some other player on the Sens will feel the same squeeze because of the Marner contract.

 

[Kin]

But that's the current reality.

Except it's no one reality. It's a situation that leads to different things being true for different people. A player in Arizona or Tampa or Dallas may look at an 8 million dollar offer and say "this is a fair reflection of the revenue I'm generating for my employers" while a player of the exact same skill level in New York or Montreal or Toronto could say that it isn't a fair reflection of the revenue he's generating for his team(to say nothing of the tax difference making the first offer more lucrative). Both of those things can be true. The extent to which they're going to inform a player's decision to sign a contract is ultimately up to them. If a larger market team is faced with the consquences of having to pay their stars a premium and as a result have less money for the rest of their roster, it's a pretty fair result of those large market teams supporting the current system at it's inception rather than being concerned with their self-interest on-ice when it mattered.

 

[Zee]

But that's the current reality.

Except it's no one reality. It's a situation that leads to different things being true for different people. A player in Arizona or Tampa or Dallas may look at an 8 million dollar offer and say "this is a fair reflection of the revenue I'm generating for my employers" while a player of the exact same skill level in New York or Montreal or Toronto could say that it isn't a fair reflection of the revenue he's generating for his team(to say nothing of the tax difference making the first offer more lucrative). Both of those things can be true. The extent to which they're going to inform a player's decision to sign a contract is ultimately up to them. If a larger market team is faced with the consquences of having to pay their stars a premium and as a result have less money for the rest of their roster, it's a pretty fair result of those large market teams supporting the current system at it's inception rather than being concerned with their self-interest on-ice when it mattered.

This goes back to the original question of which markets actually wanted the salary cap and which didn't. Do we have any proof the Leafs were driving the bus on bringing in the hard cap system?  They would be fine operating in a system with no cap, and may have very well voted against the system.  So while we're all "rah rah the owners did this to themselves" it doesn't mean every owner actually wanted this system.  At the end of the day I don't really care, the system as it currently stands isn't changing until the next lockout.  Marner, by comparison to his peers can still be paid as one of the top players in the league, and as a fan I can accept that. The fact that many players are underpaid relative to the worth to their own teams (McDavid anyone?) is really of no consequence here, as a Leafs fan I want them to ice the best team possible, and they have a good chance of signing Marner at what should be a fair number by comparison to everyone else in the league. 

 

[Kin]

This goes back to the original question of which markets actually wanted the salary cap and which didn't. Do we have any proof the Leafs were driving the bus on bringing in the hard cap system?  They would be fine operating in a system with no cap, and may have very well voted against the system.  So while we're all "rah rah the owners did this to themselves" it doesn't mean every owner actually wanted this system.

Owners voted 30-0 in favour of the new CBA.

https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2013/01/09/nhl-owners-ratify-new-cba-with-players/wcm/74b5bbdb-0193-40da-9484-c597e5ba1aa1

  At the end of the day I don't really care, the system as it currently stands isn't changing until the next lockout.  Marner, by comparison to his peers can still be paid as one of the top players in the league, and as a fan I can accept that. The fact that many players are underpaid relative to the worth to their own teams (McDavid anyone?) is really of no consequence here, as a Leafs fan I want them to ice the best team possible, and they have a good chance of signing Marner at what should be a fair number by comparison to everyone else in the league.

It's only of consequence if we're trying to get at why players may take the negotiating stance they take and why someone like Marner may play the same game of chicken Nylander did last year, ultimately resulting in a contract that is higher than currently being offered.

If you think that's neither here nor there in a discussion about Mitch Marner's possible contract...I mean, feel free to think that but that's a pretty tough sell.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

This goes back to the original question of which markets actually wanted the salary cap and which didn't. Do we have any proof the Leafs were driving the bus on bringing in the hard cap system?  They would be fine operating in a system with no cap, and may have very well voted against the system.  So while we're all "rah rah the owners did this to themselves" it doesn't mean every owner actually wanted this system.

Owners voted 30-0 in favour of the new CBA.

https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2013/01/09/nhl-owners-ratify-new-cba-with-players/wcm/74b5bbdb-0193-40da-9484-c597e5ba1aa1

Also while I don't recall any specific reporting that said the Leafs owners were among those driving the bus in the lockouts, the ones with the seemingly loudest pro-cap voices were owners of teams who "would be fine operating in a system with no cap". Boston (Jacobs), Philly (Snider), and Chicago (Wirtz) were arguably three of most hard-line owners in both lockouts, and yet competitively speaking the cap hurts them the most.

 

[Kin]

Also while I don't recall any specific reporting that said the Leafs owners were among those driving the bus in the lockouts, the ones with the seemingly loudest pro-cap voices were owners of teams who "would be fine operating in a system with no cap". Boston (Jacobs), Philly (Snider), and Chicago (Wirtz) were arguably three of most hard-line owners in both lockouts, and yet competitively speaking the cap hurts them the most.

Truth is that in a situation like this the owners of the bigger, more successful teams are going to have a disproportionate amount of say and influence because of how much revenue they contribute to the league and their ability to weather just about any system that comes their way. People will frequently say that the Leafs couldn't have stopped a hard cap but could they have been the driving force behind at the very least a less restrictive hard cap? We'll never know. When it came down to it they voted in favour of their bottom line while doing nothing for the fans like everyone else.

 

[Zee]

Also while I don't recall any specific reporting that said the Leafs owners were among those driving the bus in the lockouts, the ones with the seemingly loudest pro-cap voices were owners of teams who "would be fine operating in a system with no cap". Boston (Jacobs), Philly (Snider), and Chicago (Wirtz) were arguably three of most hard-line owners in both lockouts, and yet competitively speaking the cap hurts them the most.

Truth is that in a situation like this the owners of the bigger, more successful teams are going to have a disproportionate amount of say and influence because of how much revenue they contribute to the league and their ability to weather just about any system that comes their way. People will frequently say that the Leafs couldn't have stopped a hard cap but could they have been the driving force behind at the very least a less restrictive hard cap? We'll never know. When it came down to it they voted in favour of their bottom line while doing nothing for the fans like everyone else.

Ratifying an agreed upon deal that Bettman and whoever else was driving it by no means suggests that MLSE was in favour of it.  I'm sure when it came down to the vote, Bettman would have pushed for all owners to agree and show a unified front which doesn't speak to what conversations they had behind closed doors.  As we've seen by how the Raptors are operated, MLSE has no issue going over the salary cap and paying a luxury tax when needed.  If the Leafs had that option available to them I think it's pretty safe to say they would use it whenever they needed to.  Could they have pushed for that in the original negotiations?  I suppose so, but the original lockout was almost a year old and there was no doubt pressure to get a deal in place and get back to playing hockey. 

Again, the system is what it is today,  and I only want the Leafs to be able to succeed within the given system.  I don't see that the Marner situation is an egregious slap in the face to Marner given what he can make and how that salary would fit into the rest of the league.  I think the Leafs have positioned themselves in a fair enough way in this negotiation given what we know.

 

[Kin]

Another thing to consider is that while the cap does limit a team's total compensation how that pie gets divided wasn't handed down on stone tablets. Star players getting 15% of the cap instead of 20% while making fairly interchangeable 3rd and 4th liners millionaires as a result is no more "fair" than a situation where guys like Hyman or Johnsson are only making a million or so.

Right now I don't really see the current distribution of cap space as being particularly conducive to teams being competitive as they can so much as it is a shunting of money away from the guys who are selling jerseys and who you specifically tune into watch and giving it to teams to overpay mediocre UFAs. Why that's in anyone's interest as a fan is beyond me.

 

[Kin]

Ratifying an agreed upon deal that Bettman and whoever else was driving it by no means suggests that MLSE was in favour of it.

It absolutely, 100% literally and only means exactly that.

 

[Zee]

Ratifying an agreed upon deal that Bettman and whoever else was driving it by no means suggests that MLSE was in favour of it.

It absolutely, 100% literally and only means exactly that.

If the deal only required 2/3rds of the owners to approve and they informally already had the support, I'm sure Bettman would want all owners to get on board to show a unified front.  If they begrudgingly voted for it so as not to show descent, then technically yes they supported it.

 

[Kin]

If the deal only required 2/3rds of the owners to approve and they informally already had the support, I'm sure Bettman would want all owners to get on board to show a unified front.  If they begrudgingly voted for it so as not to show descent, then technically yes they supported it.

Whether you vote for something because you think it's the greatest thing in human history or because you're afraid of Gary Bettman being mad at you doesn't change what your vote ultimately means.

 

[Zee]

If the deal only required 2/3rds of the owners to approve and they informally already had the support, I'm sure Bettman would want all owners to get on board to show a unified front.  If they begrudgingly voted for it so as not to show descent, then technically yes they supported it.

Whether you vote for something because you think it's the greatest thing in human history or because you're afraid of Gary Bettman being mad at you doesn't change what your vote ultimately means.

So if the system is flawed, there's equal blame on the players for also ratifying the deal. 

 

[Kin]

So if the system is flawed, there's equal blame on the players for also ratifying the deal.

No. They didn't initiate a lockout and refuse to let the league continue until an agreement was reached. Their willingness to ultimately compromise in the service of their one area of employment does not make them equally responsible for the provisions of the CBA that the owners demanded in order for play to resume.

 

[Zee]

So if the system is flawed, there's equal blame on the players for also ratifying the deal.

No. They didn't initiate a lockout and refuse to let the league continue until an agreement was reached. Their willingness to ultimately compromise in the service of their one area of employment does not make them equally responsible for the provisions of the CBA that the owners demanded in order for play to resume.

Whether you vote for something because you think it's the greatest thing in human history or because you're afraid of never being able to work again doesn't change what your vote ultimately means.