So Nylander sits out one year, demands a trade, doesn’t get it? He has the leverage of signing in Europe.
I don't consider this very strong leverage, given the massive gulf in present and future earning potential between playing in Europe vs the NHL.
And offer sheets are rare, not illegal.
I absolutely never claimed they were illegal - this is something entirely concocted. I implied they were extremely rare, which they are (30 or so in the history of the NHL according to Wikipedia). Implausible =/= Impossible.
You on one hand suggest sitting a player the entire season to play hardball, which has occurred maybe twice in the thousands of thousands of contracts signed in the NHL, is perfectly reasonable. Yet an offer sheet which has occurred tenfold more frequently is implausible.
That is very disingenuous reasoning.
Again, this is disingenuous. You're creating a false equivalence by, amongst other things, conflating the distinct concepts LIKELY and COMMON. I am talking from the perspective of Dubas and, in particular, about
what I think Dubas should have done during the negotiations; and you are talking about
what you think Dubas was worried about vis-a-vis the particular approach that I advocated for. So it's completely disingenuous to then turn around and say, well, sitting a player has historically happened less often than an offer sheet being signed, ergo your scenario is more implausible than mine. For one, if we qualify
offer sheet with something to the effect of
high value and therefore high compensation offer sheet, the 30 odd offer sheets in the history of the NHL get whittled down significantly further. But, really, the main issue is that you're implying it's less
likely in this context--which is strictly false--when you actually mean it's less
common. Again, these are two different concepts. I advocated for an approach that Dubas had a 100%
likelihood of successfully enacting if he had chosen to, and you're claiming that he didn't do so because he was worried about an eventuality that had a negligible
likelihood of occurring thereafter (particularly given the context). That is my argument. That a player sitting the entire season is historically less
common than an offer sheet being signed is largely irrelevant.
And you suggested that $6M was a reasonable contract for Nylander which has no support in terms of inflation adjusted comparable contracts.
First, I said "closer to 6mm," not 6mm. But, in retrospect, I regret saying even that, because it has given you the opportunity to fixate one what is an insubstantial element of my position. I haven't recently looked at the numbers in depth (though I did at the time), but it doesn't really prejudice my broader position to concede this point in the interim, so I will.