News Article: Auston Matthews - August 1st., Contract Crickets

[Boxscore]

For how much MacKinnon cares and how great his leadership is, he sure has a ton of playoff disappointments. Outside of that single season, they've done nothing.

You mean when they won a Stanley Cup?

 

[Boxscore]

13.5 for 4 or 5 years seems very good value.

It's terrible value. Pastrnak signed for 8 x 11.75. MacKinnon for 8 x 12.5. Tkachuk signed for 8 x 9.5. Paying Matthews 2 mil more per year than Pastrnak and 4 more than Tkachuk on half the term is grotesque.

 

[ACC1224]

You mean when they won a Stanley Cup?

Honestly, there's a few that have just become a parody at this point.

 

[BayStBullies]

It's terrible value. Pastrnak signed for 8 x 11.75. MacKinnon for 8 x 12.5. Tkachuk signed for 8 x 9.5. Paying Matthews 2 mil more per year than Pastrnak and 4 more than Tkachuk on half the term is grotesque.

Neat, you're comparing a contract in Toronto to 3 markets that have more than a 9% or more tax advantage.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

It's terrible value. Pastrnak signed for 8 x 11.75. MacKinnon for 8 x 12.5. Tkachuk signed for 8 x 9.5. Paying Matthews 2 mil more per year than Pastrnak and 4 more than Tkachuk on half the term is grotesque.

He's a center and an MVP, he gets more simple as that

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Neat, you're comparing a contract in Toronto to 3 markets that have more than a 9% or more tax advantage.

Last I checked we play in the same league as those teams

 

[Boxscore]

He's a center and an MVP, he gets more simple as that

MacKinnon is a center, won a Cup, and just smoked Matthews season high in points in 71 games. Paying him a penny more than MacKinnon is absurd. Simple as that.

Neat, you're comparing a contract in Toronto to 3 markets that have more than a 9% or more tax advantage.

Take it up with the league. As long as there's a hard cap and all teams have the same numbers, players in Toronto will need to take home less money, period. That's the league's fault. If Matthews can't accept that he should demand a trade to a Florida team only.

 

[Peasy]

Matthews gets practically all his money taxed in his home state of Arizona. Its not even an issue for him lol.

 

[Boxscore]

Matthews gets practically all his money taxed in his home state of Arizona. Its not even an issue for him lol.

If this is true, then paying him 13.5 x 4 is even more absurd.

 

[Peasy]

If this is true, then paying him 13.5 x 4 is even more absurd.

Yup, but people do mental gymnastics to try and justify it lol.

Basically signing bonus can be taxed in their home residence which would be Arizona for Matthews (no income tax state). and like 95% of his last contract is in signing bonuses.

 

[notbias]

You mean when they won a Stanley Cup?

His team has largely disappointed, did they only really want it that one year? You are talking about caring being a difference maker, or his leadership.

 

[Clark4Ever]

The timing of the deals is key when looking at comparables around the league. I think percentage of cap is a better measure.

In that respect, a 13.5 million AAV is not necessarily team friendly, but it's not horrible either. As for the term, I wouldn't want to go beyond 5 years anyway as he could very well start to decline at that point and/or become more injury prone.

 

[Racer88]

Of course.

Pastrnak had 3 goals in 3 games against Bobrovsky. He didn't get goalie'd. Matthews' got goalie'd though with 0 goals in 5 games.

Your silly "goalie'd" excuse once again turns out to be complete bunk. Not even gonna bother with the other irrelevant drivel with your blatant attempt to try to steer the conversation elsewhere because you got proven wrong.

Goalied is such a straw man argument. So if a a couple of good goalies can stop a 12-14 million dollar player why are we wasting our time on such a player let alone 3 of them. Everything should have been poured into finding an elite goalie. Unfortunately the Dubas plan was to rely on scrap heap goalies in hopes of one that could pull of a miracle

 

[Niagara Bill]

He's a center and an MVP, he gets more simple as that

Not last year, so going forward is he 2021/22 or 2022/23. Last year he was not worth 13.5

 

[Stephen]

All of this "leadership" analysis is talking for the sake of talking. The reality is that a player is not considered a leader until he or she wins, at which point the player magically becomes a leader in the eyes of fans and the media. That really is it. To analyze it any deeper than that is silly. The same thing will happen here. The moment this Toronto lineup wins, and it will, Matthews will be praised for being a "leader".

Which is fair. Since winning a cup in a primary role on a team would constitute an act of “leading.”

 

[hamzarocks]

He's a center and an MVP, he gets more simple as that

He was an MVP he wasn't one this year or anywhere close

If we pay him for one peak year much much more than a direct comparable (Mackinnon at 12.6M x 8 Years) we are done. Window shut

You can absorb a shitty 13.5M AAV at 7 or 8 years

If hes doing that at 3 or 4 years we are done. He will want even more money on his next deal and take any future cap increases resutling in shitty long term depth across the board.

His lack of playoff production at a minimum scares me from believing he will be reliable to build a cup winner around.

He's one of the few offensive star forwards who sucks come playoffs

Mack, Kuch, Mcdavid, Crosby in his prime, Malkin in his Prime, Draisaitl etc all dominate the playoffs

Guys like Bergeron, Toews, RoR, Dats, Kopitar see their production usually fall off come playoff time.

We expect Matthews to be in group 1, he is paid more or in line with group 1, yet he delivers results like group 2 (individual production wise, team success there are too many underperformers here to make up for his drop in play)

 

[Boxscore]

The timing of the deals is key when looking at comparables around the league. I think percentage of cap is a better measure.

In that respect, a 13.5 million AAV is not necessarily team friendly, but it's not horrible either. As for the term, I wouldn't want to go beyond 5 years anyway as he could very well start to decline at that point and/or become more injury prone.

Well, Pastrnak signed last year for 11.75 x 8. And he just scored 61 goals and 113 points. MacKinnon signed for 12.6 x 8 and just scored 111 points in 71 games. The cap barely moved. These numbers, term, and % of cap should be the measuring stick for Matthews. He should fall between them, or at the absolute best, equal MacKinnon's 12.6 but it should be for 8 years like Nate. There's no other justification for paying Matthews 1.5 mil more than MacKinnon and for significantly less term. That's simply an unfair overpayment in both salary and term.

 

[Dekes For Days]

So pastrnak scores more and is on the ice for around the same goals, his possession metrics are better yet he isn’t better. He had more goals than the core 4 combined. When matthews did it against Boston 2019 we praised him, yet here it’s bad

Pastrnak produced more than our guys did in specifically the Florida series, but there was also a 2.03 GSAx gap per game in those respective series from just goaltending impacts alone. I know people get in the habit of ignoring goaltending impacts when talking about production, because there tends to be enough of a sample and variety in the regular season to usually trend towards what is internally driven, but that is not the case for the playoffs, where you face a very select number of goaltenders over a very limited sample, and the situations two players on different teams face is massively different.

Pastrnak also didn't have better possession and play-controlling metrics. He and Marner were the only ones who were below 50% against Florida, and Marner was still at 56.1% overall. I don't remember a lot of people praising Matthews for his 2019 series, which was still better than Pastrnak's. I do remember a lot of people berating our players for series that were better than Pastrnak's in every possible way though.

Hot streaks always seem to happen to our players.
Price, Korpisalo, Merzlekins, Bobrovsky. It has happened very year for the past 4.

It has not. It has happened in 3 out of our 8 series. Vasilevsky actually did worse than usual against us in both series.
Now 3 out of 8 times is still a bit more than one would expect, but when you consider that these are the goalies we have faced:

Holtby: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.926 career playoff SV% (97 GP)
Rask: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.925 career playoff SV% (104 GP)
Rask: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.925 career playoff SV% (104 GP)
Korpisalo: Playoff save record, 0.922 career playoff SV% (15 GP)
Price: Vezina, Jennings, Hart, Lindsay, 0.919 career playoff SV% (92 GP)
Vasilevsky: Vezina, Cup, Cup, Conn Smythe, single-playoff win record, series-clinching shutout record, 0.921 career playoff SV% (110 GP)
Vasilevsky: Vezina, Cup, Cup, Conn Smythe, single-playoff win record, series-clinching shutout record, 0.921 career playoff SV% (110 GP)
Bobrovsky: Vezina, Vezina

Facing a top goalie performance 3 times suddenly doesn't seem so unbelievable. It's largely a collection of some of the best goalies of that era, that have demonstrated an ability to play at that high level for periods of time much longer than a series. And every single one that has done it to us, continued doing it after us to other teams - each one only losing to the eventual Cup champion, usually in the Cup final.

In 50 playoff games against us, our opponent's goalies have averaged +0.507 GSAx per game.
In 35 playoff games against the teams our opponents faced directly after us, our opponent's goalies have averaged +0.802 GSAx per game.
So over the past 7 years, we're actually converting better than the teams that advanced and faced them next.

Matthews scored 18G in the last 20 games in 2020-2021 so either his injury wasn’t the big or he wasn’t injured at all, then all of a sudden he forgets how to score

Or his injury got worse as it was more targeted in a playoff series, or other factors piled on top, or that's just how things happened to fall over that specific stretch of games. He also went through a stretch that season where he had 3 goals in 13 games, including two separate 5-game goalless droughts. That's how things go sometimes. Your wrist is hurting and you hit the post instead of sniping the top corner a couple of times, and then a hot goalie robs you a couple times, and that 5 goals you would have had if you were healthy and facing average goaltending is suddenly 1. That's hockey, and it doesn't mean that you suck, or you don't care, or you're a bad leader, or that you'll never score in the playoffs.

Matthews this year did the exact same thing. 12 goals in 20 games, not as bad so maybe the injury is lingering, but then he scores 5 goals in 6 games against vasi. Multiple snipes. One would think he’s learned to score in the playoffs Then florida comes and he can’t score.

Gee, it's almost like there's another half of the equation than just the shooting player that can cause big swings in raw production, even when the actual quality of the player and the underlying play and impacts they're bringing aren't significantly changing.

 

[JKG33]

I'm so sick and tired of this loser, his contract demands, his nonchalant style of play, and his failure to show-up in the playoffs. He's not better than Pasta, he's well below Mac & Drai, and he's certainly nowhere near McDavid. Yet he wants to be paid more than all of them. f*** off.

I'm not sure if I seen this here or on the main forum, but when winners like MacKinnon and Crosby are going full send with offseason training, he's busy following the Bieber circus and hitting up UFC events.

At this point I'd rather see him walk as a UFA instead of signed to another bloated contract. Anaheim would be the ideal destination for him, he could live his Cali lifestyle without having to worry about playing 7 extra games at the end of the season. Him and Zegras would be a perfect fit, the most overrated duo of this era.

 

[horner]

13.5 mil
Willy will be traded thank you Matthew's
Marner will be next

 

[MCR74]

He was an MVP he wasn't one this year or anywhere close

If we pay him for one peak year much much more than a direct comparable (Mackinnon at 12.6M x 8 Years) we are done. Window shut

You can absorb a shitty 13.5M AAV at 7 or 8 years

If hes doing that at 3 or 4 years we are done. He will want even more money on his next deal and take any future cap increases resutling in shitty long term depth across the board.

His lack of playoff production at a minimum scares me from believing he will be reliable to build a cup winner around.

He's one of the few offensive star forwards who sucks come playoffs

Mack, Kuch, Mcdavid, Crosby in his prime, Malkin in his Prime, Draisaitl etc all dominate the playoffs

Guys like Bergeron, Toews, RoR, Dats, Kopitar see their production usually fall off come playoff time.

We expect Matthews to be in group 1, he is paid more or in line with group 1, yet he delivers results like group 2 (individual production wise, team success there are too many underperformers here to make up for his drop in play)

Great post. Giving him over $13M this time around, especially short term, isn't a good idea. I don't believe Matthews will suddenly develop that extra gear for the playoffs. He's yet to show it.

 

[Boxscore]

All of this "leadership" analysis is talking for the sake of talking. The reality is that a player is not considered a leader until he or she wins.

How so? Dougie, Clark, and Sundin were all considered great leaders and they never won a Cup. If Matthews was scoring in the playoffs like Draisaitl and McDavid do, and was publicly incensed after losing the way MacKinnon was, we'd all be praising his leadership, win or lose. But we're not. Because his lack of leadership, and inability to take his game to the next level in the playoffs (so far), is a big part of the reason we have only won 1 playoff series 7 years.

 

[keonsbitterness]

Goalied is such a straw man argument. So if a a couple of good goalies can stop a 12-14 million dollar player why are we wasting our time on such a player let alone 3 of them. Everything should have been poured into finding an elite goalie. Unfortunately the Dubas plan was to rely on scrap heap goalies in hopes of one that could pull of a miracle

Using "goalied" or anything as an excuse won't fly any more. Our stars are getting paid to overcome whatever is thrown at them more than once every eight series. Looks like the Shanaplan is to re-sign them all, so we're stuck with them. God help them if they keep wetting the bed.

 

[Stephen]

Neat, you're comparing a contract in Toronto to 3 markets that have more than a 9% or more tax advantage.

Leafs players also pay for cost of living in Canadian dollars for a portion of the season while earning greenbacks. What do?

 

[JKG33]

Leafs players also pay for cost of living in Canadian dollars for a portion of the season while earning greenbacks. What do?

This is an excellent point that never gets brought up when the whining about taxes comes in.

I 100% don't blame players at all for wanting to avoid Canada, but that US dollar goes a helluva lot further here