Flurry of new contracts prelude NHL lockout
The negotiations between the NHL and the NHLPA haven't made much sense. Urgency has been lacking and the divide has been great throughout a process that saw both sides appear to be more concerned about their image with the fans than actually getting a deal done.
With that in mind, it was only appropriate that the NHL lockout came with a flurry of new contracts from owners that claimed they were paying their talent far too much money. Perfect irony.
The NHL has stated that their owners feel that players around the league are receiving contracts that are too large. The very same owners then went and gave out an estimated $200 million worth of new contracts to their players on the two days leading into the lockout. Makes perfect sense, right?
If your attention was firmly focused on the lockout - which it probably was - you missed a wave of activity around the NHL. Unfortunately, none of that activity involved any form of negotiations to prevent a lockout but that's a topic to tackle in a different article.
Boston gave Milan Lucic a three-year, $18 million extension. The irony around this deal is almost too much to bear. Amidst the NHL owners stating how grossly overpaid they believe the players are, Lucic is given a contract that pays $6 million a season. His new contract will make him the highest paid player on the Bruins. Lucic tallied 26 goals and a total of 61 points during the 2011-12 season. He's a talented skater but you'll find very few fans that believe he deserves to be the highest paid member on the Bruins, let alone any that think $6 million annually is on point. Lucic's new deal is supposedly the exact type of deal the owners have a problem with and here he receives his new contract hours before the old CBA expires. Perfectly logical.
A few of the other major deals that were announced over the past couple days can be seen below.
Buffalo signed Tyler Ennis to a two-year, $5.65 million extension.
Anaheim signed Cam Fowler to a five-year, $20 million extension.
Nashville gave Kevin Klein a five-year, $14.5 million deal.
The Islanders rewarded Matt Martin with a new four-year contract.
All of these owners directly contradicted the NHL's stance on the expiring bargaining agreement. If the old CBA was so poorly structured, why were all of these owners so eager to go out and sign players under it? It's as if these owners in particular had no major quandary against the old agreement. They couldn't help but go out and spend more money, only to again stand behind the idea that their players are overpaid.
Ridiculous.
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David Rogers is a staff writer for Puck Drunk Love & runs FrozenNotes.com.
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For the sake of this list, I'm going to operate under the following assumptions: 1) Contracts that are "too long" are those over five years in length. 2) Contracts that pay the player "too much" are those that break 5M/year normally, or 8M a year for star-caliber players. We can argue about the exact numbers later, of course. I'll break the teams out in a list, based on their valuations from this Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/nhl-valuations/list/ There's no conveniently sortable AND up-to-date list of signings with monetary values that I've found, so this may be mildly outdated already.
1) Toronto Maple Leafs:
No signings that meet either condition.
2) New York Rangers:
No signings that meet either condition. They did take on the Rick Nash contract via trade, though.
3) Montreal Canadiens:
Carey Price - 6Y/39M (6.5M/Y)
4) Detroit Red Wings:
No signings that meet either condition.
5) Boston Bruins:
Milan Lucic - 3Y/18M (6M/Y)
6) Chicago Blackhawks:
No signings that meet either condition.
7) Vancouver Canucks:
Jason Garrison - 6Y/27.6M (4.6M/Y)
8) Philadelphia Flyers:
No signings that meet either condition. They drove the 110M offer sheet for Weber, though.
9) Pittsburgh Penguins:
No signings that meet either condition.
10) Los Angeles Kings:
No signings that meet either condition.
11) Dallas Stars:
No signings that meet either condition.
12) Washington Capitals:
John Carlson - 6Y/23.8M (3.97M/Y)
Mike Green - 3Y/18.25M (6.1M/Y)
13) Calgary Flames:
Dennis Wideman - 5Y/26.25M (5.25M/Y)
14) Minnesota Wild:
Zach Parise - 13Y/98M (7.5M/Y)
Ryan Suter - 13Y/98M (7.5M/Y)
15) Edmonton Oilers:
No signings that meet either condition.
16) San Jose Sharks:
No signings that meet either condition.
17) Ottawa Senators:
Erik Karlsson - 7Y/45.5M (6.5M/Y)
18) Colorado Avalanche:
No signings that meet either condition.
19) Anaheim Ducks:
No signings that meet either condition.
20) New Jersey Devils:
No signings that meet either condition.
21) Tampa Bay Lightning:
Matt Carle - 6Y/33M (5.5M/Y)
22) Buffalo Sabres:
No signings that meet either condition. Almost shocking, given their past profligacy.
23) Carolina Hurricanes:
No signings that meet either condition... unless you want to argue the star-ness of Alex Semin.
24) Winnipeg Jets:
Evander Kane - 6Y/31.5M (5.25M/Y)
25) Nashville Predators:
No signings that meet either condition, but they got bludgeoned with Philly's 110M offer sheet.
26) Florida Panthers:
No signings that meet either condition.
27) St. Louis Blues:
No signings that meet either condition.
28) Columbus Blue Jackets:
No signings that meet either condition.
29) New York Islanders:
No signings that meet either condition.
30) Phoenix Coyotes:
No signings that meet either condition.
So, only four of the top ten teams in valuation handed out any contracts that meet the (admittedly imposed by me) restrictions on what makes an outlandish contract. Of the four, I think Montreal locking up their franchise goalie makes the most sense, though I don't know that that's necessarily germane to the discussion. I'm including the Weber contract in this, since it seems practically inarguable that Nashville wouldn't have given him 14 years and 110 million dollars if not for the offer sheet by Philadelphia.
The majority of the movement was actually within the middle third by valuation, with six contracts meeting one or both of the criteria for inclusion. Obviously, the twin 13/98 contracts from Minnesota stick out here.
Only the top half of the bottom ten made additions to the list, including Nashville being on the hook for Weber.
Admittedly, there was more movement outside of the top ten teams than I expected when I started getting the information together. Altogether, twelve contracts made the list, and only two of them were offered by teams outside of the top half of the league by valuation, plus one due to Nashville's matching. So, I suppose my point isn't entirely unraveled by this - the CBA is still big markets versus small markets, and all of them versus the players. The definition of big market is just a bit more broad than I was expecting.
@miendiem Nice work, as usual, in uncovering some new information. I can only imagine what the actual conversations between the owners are. They meet, all vote unanimously for a lockout, yet some have to be irritated by deals like the ones we saw for Parise, Suter and Weber. I just don't understand how everyone, especially smaller markets, can sit back and remain silent.
My main point in the post was that supposedly every owner was against the old CBA. Yet they couldn't resist locking up their players under the recently expired one as opposed to waiting for a new one, which might limit what they do. Seems hypocritical.
Latest blog post: NHL Lockout Begins, Attention Shifts to the AHL
@David Rogers I would give quite a bit to be a fly on the wall in the owners meetings. One can only think that there's a quite sizable divide in that room, at least if the above numbers are anything to go by.
By no means am I saying that it's not hypocritical on the part of the league, or at least the significant portion of it that was abusing the loopholes in the old CBA for all they were worth with one hand while counting down to the lockout and the expected rules changes with the other.
Basically, as a fan of a small market club (at least going by revenues), this not getting properly fixed fills me with a certain amount of sports fan dread - what happened to Nashville with Shea Weber (and Ryan Suter, to an extent) could very well be the Blues with Pietrangelo and Shattenkirk entering the start of their RFA years after this season, whether it gets played or not.
All that said, if I'm on anybody's side, I'm on the fans' side. Both of the large market fans, who should be able to expect that their team can spend to the cap, whatever that might be, and of the small market fans, who should be in a situation via the cap/floor and revenue sharing to field a league-competitive team while not drowning in the next truckload of red ink. The sides at the table are simply going to have to realize that it's going to take a bit from column A (reduced share of HRR), and a bit from column B (increased revenue sharing) to make this work. Both sides get something, but not everything, and this mostly gets fixed. (Changing the rules on how cap hits are determined would be the other big part of this - it doesn't matter if a contract is 14 years long, if the hit is 12M/12M/whatever the remainder is, as far as I'm concerned.)
I believe it was in one of Laura Astorian's posts that I made the comment about where the revenue losses will come from. Much like the expected eventual bones of the new CBA, I stand by the idea that the revenue losses will be from the casual fans turned off by the lack of sport.
I've been thinking about this, and it brings to mind a potential research project: How did all of these new contracts break down by team? My expectation is that Minnesota with their dual 90M+ deals, and the Philly-written Nashville deal are the outliers, and that most of these contracts have been handed out in the markets that can actually support them, at least theoretically. We'll see, it'll be a good project for a Sunday afternoon.
@miendiem You keep up the analysis as you have, or if you dedicate Sundays to writing, we might just have to sign you on as a writer here. You've been warned.
Latest blog post: NHL Lockout Begins, Attention Shifts to the AHL
@David Rogers Warning heard loud and clear, if several hours late. Obviously, my first order of business would be to remember to read nested comments properly. heheh
