Around the League 45: The Stanley Cup is in God's Waiting Room

[cptjeff]

1) The $64M was Neely's comment and the Agent publicly stated it was the first time they've heard that. I didn't follow it closely to know how that sugared out.

It came out that the offer had been $7.8m/yr. Not technically 8, but close enough that the agent (Lew Gross) was being more than a little dishonest with the outrage. And the Bruins probably fully expected him to respond to that offer with "can we just make it 8", which they would have then accepted. You may not trust management, but IMO it's pretty clear Neely was being more honest than Gross in this one.

The "resetting the goalie market" was another comment from Neely about what Swayman's ask had been. Remember, Gross is the guy behind the Nylander holdout and massive contract. He's extremely aggressive in his asks and extremely aggressive in his tactics. And I think he would have been happy to do that again, this reads to me like Swayman telling Gross to take what's on the table now in order to not miss the season.

As for fans siding with management, the interests of fans are aligned with management. better value contracts means more better players, which means better teams. It's a salary cap world where the quality of a roster *is* a zero sum game. And one player getting more means other players get less. And the overall pool of player money is fixed- if you want to root for the little guy, remember that the bigger contracts for stars get, the less is available for the role players who get paid a lot less and whose careers are a lot shorter.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

It came out that the offer had been $7.8m/yr. Not technically 8, but close enough that the agent (Lew Gross) was being more than a little dishonest with the outrage. And the Bruins probably fully expected him to respond to that offer with "can we just make it 8", which they would have then accepted. You may not trust management, but IMO it's pretty clear Neely was being more honest than Gross in this one.

Thanks. So he ended up getting $400K per year more over 8 years so a total of $3.2M more? That's not insignificant and a pretty good bump vs the $7.8.

The "resetting the goalie market" was another comment from Neely about what Swayman's ask had been. Remember, Gross is the guy behind the Nylander holdout and massive contract. He's extremely aggressive in his asks and extremely aggressive in his tactics. And I think he would have been happy to do that again, this reads to me like Swayman telling Gross to take what's on the table now in order to not miss the season.

And Gross was right with Nylander. He was getting squeezed by the Leafs because they needed money for Tavares, Marner and Matthews. Nylander played on a discount and was better than two of those guys. I don't blame him.

As for fans siding with management, the interests of fans are aligned with management. better value contracts means more better players, which means better teams. It's a salary cap world where the quality of a roster *is* a zero sum game. And one player getting more means other players get less.

Oh, I understand WHY fans align with management. We are "team first, player 2nd" when it comes to our priorities so I'm not knocking it, I'm just stating that it skews our views toward these negitiations.

Player asks for a great deal: "He's GREEDY!"
GM signs a guy for a below market value: "Way to go! Great job"

And the overall pool of player money is fixed- if you want to root for the little guy, remember that the bigger contracts for stars get, the less is available for the role players who get paid a lot less and whose careers are a lot shorter.

It's not about rooting for the little guy. The little guy isn't driving revenue in the NHL, the stars are. Under no circumstances would I tell a star to take less so the little guy can make more.