Who will get the bigger contract: Marner or Rantanen?

[Voight]

No, I don't think this take makes sense. The perception Colorado had was Mikko is a complementary player who got so many points because he played alongside MacKinnon most of the time.

If he doesn't get points in Carolina, GMs will notice, especially if Necas continues to outscore him the rest of the season which he's doing right now (as of this post Necas has 12 points in 11 games compared to 3 in 8 for Rants)

EDIT: Mikko scored 2 points in tonight's game so has 5 points in 9 games so far with Carolina (thx @RoyIsALegend)

GMs often pay for past performance and love the headlines that would come from signing a top player like Rantanen. I think it's a foregone conclusion he beats Tavares' $77 million dollar contract.

Pre trade he had 52 points in 44 games without MackInnon across his career, that would be 92 points in a full season. 92 points would be his 3rd best point total cross a full season in his career.

 

[PainForShane]

GMs often pay for past performance and love the headlines that would come from signing a top player like Rantanen. I think it's a foregone conclusion he beats Tavares' $77 million dollar contract.

Pre trade he had 52 points in 44 games without MackInnon across his career, that would be 92 points in a full season. 92 points would be his 3rd best point total cross a full season in his career.

I'm not entirely sure what he'll make but to be honest I think it really depends how he and the Hurricanes go the rest of the year. Right now he's at 5 points in 9 games, that's a 46 point pace over 82 games which is not good at all. I don't expect that pace to last but I think both of our pace examples have too small of a sample size to be meaningful.

***

Put a different way my disagreement with your take is your statement "He could go pointless the rest of the season and he wouldn't lose any money as a free agent," I completely disagree with that. If he actually goes pointless the rest of the season (ie 5 points in 30ish games in Carolina) -- of course that's not realistic but if that happens I think he'll be costing himself 10s of millions over the course of the contract.

More realistically (but still on the low end), if Mikko finishes with something like 20 or so points in ~30 games with Carolina then it'll be up his playoff performance -- if he ends up being mediocre and Canes lose early I think it's highly unlikely that he'll become one of the game's top paid players ie the 13-14m range that he and his agent want. Conversely if he goes over a point a game going forward, the Canes win the cup and Rants wins the Conn Smythe, imo he's certainly going to make that much money and potentially more.

None of really know what'll happen so we'll see. Either way imo his performance with Carolina (in either direction) will certainly affect his upcoming UFA deal, I don't think this is even a question

 

[Voight]

I'm not entirely sure what he'll make but to be honest I think it really depends how he and the Hurricanes go the rest of the year. Right now he's at 5 points in 9 games, that's a 46 point pace over 82 games which is not good at all. I don't expect that pace to last but I think both of our pace examples have too small of a sample size to be meaningful.

***

Put a different way my disagreement with your take is your statement "He could go pointless the rest of the season and he wouldn't lose any money as a free agent," I completely disagree with that. If he actually goes pointless the rest of the season (ie 5 points in 30ish games in Carolina) -- of course that's not realistic but if that happens I think he'll be costing himself 10s of millions over the course of the contract.

More realistically (but still on the low end), if Mikko finishes with something like 20 or so points in ~30 games with Carolina then it'll be up his playoff performance -- if he ends up being mediocre and Canes lose early I think it's highly unlikely that he'll become one of the game's top paid players ie the 13-14m range that he and his agent want. Conversely if he goes over a point a game going forward, the Canes win the cup and Rants wins the Conn Smythe, imo he's certainly going to make that much money and potentially more.

None of really know what'll happen so we'll see. Either way imo his performance with Carolina (in either direction) will certainly affect his upcoming UFA deal, I don't think this is even a question

We'll have to agree to disagree here because I dont think his Carolina tenure will affect his free agent value much if at all. You could chalk up poor performance to a sudden change of scenery, line mates whatever. Not saying thats the case but ultimately as I said, GMs will still be climbing over one another to sign him and give him. blank check so to speak.

 

[PainForShane]

We'll have to agree to disagree here because I dont think his Carolina tenure will affect his free agent value much if at all. You could chalk up poor performance to a sudden change of scenery, line mates whatever. Not saying thats the case but ultimately as I said, GMs will still be climbing over one another to sign him and give him. blank check so to speak.

Yeah we can agree to disagree. 100% agree that GMs "will still be climbing over one another to sign him" but I don't think he gets a blank check unless he produces in both the rest of the reg season and the playoffs. That Huberdeau signing is still pretty recent and if Marner becomes available that also makes things a lot more unpredictable, plus in this cap world it's hard to clear that much space.

All that said it only takes a single GM to make an outsized offer, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if he got anywhere from 9 / 9.5m AAV all the up to 14m+ depending on the market and how he and the Canes do both in the reg season and the playoffs. I could also easily see him pulling a Klingberg or Taylor Hall and severely overplaying his hand. We'll see.

Back to the topic of the thread, I think Marner gets paid more. Coming off an excellent 4 Nations and Toronto has a history of overpaying their star players