Thing is Nylander can ask for a given number and Leafs can refuse to give it to him, but who has more to lose ? Nylander who can get what Leafs are offering (6M ballpark) anywhere, any day of the week or the Leafs who are refusing to overpay a bit ?
It's not because Pastarnak and Gaudreault signed team friendly contracts that Nylander HAS to.
Right... except he cant because he is an
RFA.
To get Nylander another team would not just have to out-bid the Leafs, but be willing to send the Leafs a boatload of picks back as compensation (1st, 2nd and 3rd if less then 8.1 million, two 1sts, a 2nd and a 3rd if more). This is why RFAs rarely get offersheeted and why teams like the Leafs
absolutely can afford to hard-ball RFAs and generally do
not end up overpaying them. Toronto has all the leverage here so why would they be willing to overpay Nylander? Let him sit out some pre-season games and worse comes to worst a regular season game or two... then sign him to a reasonable contract. We have seen this happen many times before with other RFAs. Dubas is right not to fold here.
If another team wants to substantially overpay Nylander on a long term deal and are willing to send back all those picks, then so be it. But I sincerely doubt there is another NHL team willing to pay that price.