If only they gave Alfie his damn $5.5M contract as he demanded, we wouldn't be here with that bull**** contract.
Alfredsson was asking for more than 5.5. He signed with the Red Wings at market value. With the Senators he wanted above market value in order to compensate him for playing through the final year of his previous contract at only 1M per. Alfredsson claimed that final year was only put there to help the Senators circumvent the cap, and that both sides felt Alfredsson would be retired by that point. Meaning neither side had intended to value Alfredsson at only 1M in salary for the 12-13 season.
When Alfredsson felt good and decided to play, he claims to have brought up the issue with management/ownership about signing an extension to compensate him. I don't recall if he claimed whether there was a promise made to extend him, and then it just never happened.
Bryan Murray disputed Alfredsson's version of events, claiming that the 1M per season year was there because Alfredsson wanted his money up front.
Alfredsson's ask from the Senators was either a 1 year deal for 7 million, which would mean that he would have played 12-13 and then 13-14 for an average of 4 million per season. Or, his ask was a 2 year deal for 12 million, meaning he would have played all 3 seasons for roughly an average of 4.33 million.
You're right about the Ryan thing though. One of Bryan Murray's selling points to Alfredsson was apparently that he had a trade for Bobby Ryan lined up, and that he wold not be able to pull the trigger on the deal if he paid Alfredsson 7 million dollars.
It's likely that we had somewhere in the vicinity of 9 million dollars to spend on players since Ryan made in the 5.5 range, and we signed MacArthur for 3.25M. Assuming Alfredsson's side of the story is true, what Murray and Melnyk did was wrong, but from a ruthless sports point of view, it shows why moving on from Alfredsson might have looked like the right move at the time. With our budget, retaining Alfredsson would have prevented us from acquiring what was supposed to be a superstar goal scorer, and a reclamation top 6 forward. While Alfredsson was still a top 6 forward in his own right, management was right to be concerned about his durability.
In the long term, we would have been much better off keeping Alfredsson. It wasn't anything anybody could have predicted, but MacArthur is now out of the league, Bobby Ryan has seen a tremendous decline with injuries that have limited him to contributing roughly 30 points this most recent season, and we would have retained Silfverberg and a top 10 draft pick. Given that we would not have had Ryan and MacArthur who were major contributors in the 13-14 season, and that Alfredsson who was limited to 68 games for the playoff bound Red Wings might have been shut down much earlier, there's a reasonable chance that pick would have been in the top 5.
So yeah....you are right, mostly with the benefit of hindsight, not keeping Alfredsson let off a ripple of events that likely has set our franchise back years. While myself and others were on board with the Ryan extension at the time, given our budget, rising player salaries, and Ryan's inability to stay healthy, that contract is crippling.
(Sorry for the long post)
