GMs are still learning how to deal with soon-to-be unrestricted free agents ahead of the trade deadline in the new NHL.
Today is Valentine's Day, anybody in the National Hockey League feeling the love?
Certainly not NHL general managers, who going into their upcoming meetings this weekend are pretty much obsessed with how best to handle relationships that are on the verge of falling apart.
It's happening in Toronto where the question of how long veteran forward Mats Sundin and the Leafs can or should continue their generally fruitful affair is all but consuming the interested parties there.
It's happening in Buffalo where Sabres general manager Darcy Regier continues to dance with soon-to-be unrestricted free agent defenceman Brian Campbell. Regier not only needs to decide whether the relationship is worth saving, but at what cost.
Same goes for GM Don Waddell in Atlanta and free-agent-to-be Marian Hossa and every other GM who has a soon-to-be unrestricted player on his hands. The consensus is that it's smarter to end the relationship and move the player before he's able to walk away as an unrestricted but, as always, there are complications.
First off, the market has yet to be established. Last season it was exceptionally high for what was viewed as largely rental players, but this year it's also complicated by the growing number of younger free agents, players who are about to come onto the market based on an easing of restrictions in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. Campbell, an excellent puck-carrying defenceman with good leadership skills and real offensive talent, is the poster child for this group.
It's also complicated by the tightly-bunched packs in both the Western and Eastern Conference where not only making the playoffs is still an option for many teams, but playoff positioning (often a factor in how deep a not-true Stanley Cup contender can go in making real money) is an issue.
But what really irks the GMs is that given all the time and love they've invested in these relationships they have precious little say in the outcome.
They can't keep their interests happy via the old tried-and-true formula that served the well-moneyed clubs for so many years. Making it rain money isn't much of an option any more given the restrictions of the salary cap.
Preaching the love and hopping to curry favor of a home-team discount doesn't count for much anymore either. Veterans who've waited a long time for their chance to seize control of the relationship are too savvy for that and the younger interests, well, they haven't been around long enough to develop a real relationship and in many cases don't believe it's in their best interests to try and let one develop. They are after all the one area where agents can still extract a living wage and cutting deals that leave money on the table in return for exactly what, a promise of a winning team down the road, really doesn't carry a lot of weight.
Even if the GMs bite the bullet so to speak and do nothing at the deadline and then try to re-sign the players they kept out of some sort of perceived loyalty to the team on the ice and the chances they had for success, it tends to blow up in their collective faces, especially if team ownership has a say.
Buffalo tried that last spring. The Sabres, President's Trophy winners last season, thought they had a legitimate chance at the Stanley Cup. They didn't move Daniel Briere and Chris Drury at the deadline (of course they didn't sign them to long-term deals earlier in the season either) and as soon as they were ousted by the Ottawa Senators in the Eastern Conference Final, Drury and Briere were on the path determined by the open marketplace. The Sabres got nothing but a verbal beating from media and their fans in return.
One gets the sense that the Sabres won't do that again no matter what their position is in the days leading up to Feb. 23.
Players have a ridiculous amount of control over their own destiny these days but the GMs really have only themselves to blame. They continue to establish market value unforeseen even by them and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman when the new rules were formulated after a hard-fought win over the Players’ Association in the season-long lockout of 2005.
In the short time after which the new market came into play, GMs opened the door to the movement of younger players by changing the rules on how they dealt with expiring entry-level contracts
Though Edmonton Oilers general manager Kevin Lowe was certainly within his rights to use the new CBA to make free-agent offer sheets first to Thomas Vanek of the Buffalo Sabres (rejected) and later to Dustin Penner of the Anaheim Ducks (accepted), Ducks general manager Brian Burke had a point when he said Lowe's actions "eliminate the second contract in the NHL."
Penner, a good young talent but still largely unproven, went from making $450,000 to $4.25 million and the Oilers appear no closer to making the playoffs with him in the lineup. The Sabres matched the offer to Vanek but are now paying him $50 million over the life of a long-term deal, $10 million this season alone and until the last few weeks, he had been a disappointment this time around.
The GMs have also seemingly hurt themselves with long-term deals to players, some stretching out over 12 and even 15 years.
That's drawn the wrath of Bettman himself who generally stays away from comments regarding how GMs do their business, but at a fan rally in Nashville recently stated that his "preference" would be for shorter terms and that the issue is not just economics, but how you build your team
"I'm not a general manager and I've never been one," Bettman said while noting that it is indeed a difficult job. "There are some teams that think taking the player that is the cornerstone of the franchise or at least they think he is and locking him up for his career 10, 13, 15 years, is the way to keep him and build your franchise around him. There are other clubs who -- and this is the way I would run a club if I were a general manager -- who think shorter contracts are better because then you have flexibility.
"Also the likelihood that over a 10 or 15 year period that either the club or the player is going to be happy the whole time -- if the player turns out to be even better than everybody thought then he'll feel underpaid at some point, if he turns out not to be as good as the team had hoped then they'll feel that they are overpaying him -- getting that balance right is a hard thing to do keeping both sides happy. More importantly, I think you need the flexibility to build your team and make adjustments so if it were me I'd do shorter term contracts, not longer term.
"What's interesting is that we're two and a half years into the system, the system is working. What is the right model? What is going to lead you to the Stanley Cup or the playoffs continuously? (Is it) long-term contracts, short-term? I don't think anybody knows yet, but if I were betting, I would go short term."
Clearly the GMs are not feeling the love from their commissioner and though that is nothing new in the hockey business it does give us an insight as to what the dynamic might be as we approach the third trade deadline under this agreement.
The perception that spending is out of control is an illusion because under the terms of the CBA if teams overspend, the league, eventually gets the money back in terms of the escrow factor. In addition, GMs are beginning to think that as more players come into free agency, the price is likely to go down (think of it as supply-side economics) and if that happens then it makes sense to let a player like Hossa or Campbell walk for nothing at the end of a season because there will be replacement players on the market come July 1.
That didn't happen the last two summers, but the pool is expected to grow. The question at this trade deadline is whether or not GMs truly believe that and will have the courage to take the heat of not playing the trade deadline game where overpaying is generally the rule.
The view from here is that the commissioner would love to see that happen, but that GMs -- and Regier and Waddell will be test cases in this regard -- won't be patient enough to see if he's right, especially if making or missing the playoffs hangs in the balance.
Given past practice, Waddell sees little to convince him things are about to change. He thinks the prices for trades will be even higher this year than last, a year when he helped set the price remarkably high.
"All it takes is one team to step forward," Waddell said in a conference call Wednesday. "All it takes is for one team to want to do something and that sparks other teams to try and match and stay even with them. I won't be surprised if there are deals made this year that will come with a very high price -- and the price won't be measured at the time the deal is made, it'll be measured once the season is over."
That's pretty much the way it has always been in the NHL and it's pretty much the way the NHL Players’ Association has come to have so many things go their way, even in a collective bargaining agreement that many thought favoured ownership by a wide margin.
"It only takes one" was the rule of thumb former PA boss Bob Goodenow counted on for years and it's the one Bettman has been fighting against for just as long.
Bettman continues to fight the fight in that regard but when it comes to GMs and the trade deadline it's likely he won't be feeling the love anytime soon.
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To those of you who took exception to my recent column on Peter Forsberg and the problems that come with unrestricted free agents coming out of retirement to pick and choose their place in the game, without playing the bulk of the regular season, I should point out that even the commissioner sees it as a potential problem.
"It's the first time we've seen it like this, but if it's a trend we'll have to address it with the Players' Association," Bettman said. "My own belief, based on personal circumstances of the three players involved (Scott Niedermayer, Teemu Selanne and Forsberg), is that this may be an aberration but if this aberration becomes a practice I think we're going to have to figure out what to do about it."
