Could some other team potentially offer sheet Nylander the money he's asking for (I really don't know) , and if yes, what would Tor do? Would Tor take the picks or cave in and match, and how would Tor management look like then?
Only four teams have the capspace + picks required to do an offersheet Nylander. Carolina, Colorado, Vancouver, and Arizona. A few reasons why they likely won't:
- Three of them weren't playoff teams last year, so they'd be risking giving up a lottery pick.
- In order to get him by offersheet, they'd have to overpay him. Nylander's market value is somewhere around ~6.5M. To get him by an offersheet? Would probably cost ~7.25M+ I'd imagine.
- Overpay Nylander, and what does that mean for other RFA negotiations on these teams? Aho, Rantanen, Keller, Boeser, etc all have upcoming contracts and all deserve more money than Nylander unless they have pretty bad seasons this year.
- Any contract over 5 years in length has its compensation based on the total $$ going to Nylander divided by 5, not by the actual number of years of the contract. So virtually anything 6+ years in length is going to require giving up two 1sts, a 2nd, and a 3rd because it will push the compensation number above ~8.1M (e.g. 7.25M over five years would be treated as 8.7M for offersheet compensation purposes).
If it actually happened, what would Toronto do? Probably depends on the contract, compensation picks, and which team it is (some are more likely to give up lottery picks). Can't see the Leafs matching though if it's above 7M. On a 5 year deal, that's a major overpayment (Larkin just signed for 5 years X 6.1M), and on a 6 year deal, they'd get two 1sts + 2nd + 3rd as compensation (plus have all that capspace to do something with).