Would you take Ekblad back at a "hometown" discount (4-5 million AAV)

[Jean Luc Discard]

he's just not that bad. he's got bad posture and a bit of an awkward stride

 

[RogerRogerr]

There you go again. Winning a cup doesn't magically make a player better.

Ekblad will have to take serious discount on his next new contract to stay with the team. If he doesn't, then some other chump can pay the premium for a 'Stanley Cup champion'.

It doesn't make him a better player. But it does mean that he was good enough to be #2D on a team that managed to win the Cup. If he was such a big liability, he would have been feasted on and we wouldn't have gone past a couple of rounds, or he would have been dropped in the lineup. We play our D in a way that mitigate their reliance on footspeed and in the playoffs, players get away with more clutching and grabbing and Ek is good at that.
If Ek stays, he'll get less than now but more than 2.5M.

 

[zeroG]

There you go again. Winning a cup doesn't magically make a player better.

Ekblad will have to take serious discount on his next new contract to stay with the team. If he doesn't, then some other chump can pay the premium for a 'Stanley Cup champion'.

we have some evidence in front of us and that is - ekblad played top pair minutes as the panthers went through one of the most difficult paths to winning a stanley cup in history. (i think it was 6th on list using some modern model).

the difficulty rank of the path is not what's important, though. any path will include deep and skilled teams as rounds progress. here are his numbers from the playoffs last year.

GP	G	A	P	+/-	PIM	TOI/G
24	1	5	6	+4	16	22:33

for comparison's sake, montour had 11 points, 4 of which were PP. so that's the primary difference between the two. they played similar minutes overall, montour averaging 9 seconds more per game, explained completely by his presence on the PP. montour is two years older. his new contract is north of 7M/yr over 7 years.

sure, montour is a beast physically and more fluid/faster skater and that explains to some degree why a team would be willing to give him that term. but the numbers are the numbers. ekblad played the (much) more difficult minutes last postseason and we won every series.

i'm not saying winning the cup made him better. i'm saying we won the cup because he's better than you think. and there is hard evidence to support this assertion.

all that said, i don't think ek is going to get 7M from us. he almost certainly could on the open market, not based on the fact he's a champion, but based on the fact that's what players who can play his minutes and produce get paid.

i don't think he will get the same term as monty based on his injury history and i don't think he will ask for the same money here given the existing salary structure where you have players giving significant discounts to stay. but i do think he's extremely valuable at a lower number. whether zito feels he can get better value remains to be seen but there's a saying - a bird in hand is better than two in the bush.

 

[zeroG]

View attachment 917794

make all the jokes you want. effective is effective.

 

[ProjectPanthers]

Ekblad isn't a strong skater, not a good one. He's not even an average skater. He's a below average skater which is something you don't want to see from your highest earning dman. His skating ability, or lack thereof, makes me question his hockey IQ department because if he acknowledges his limitations in this regard then why does he have to e.g. make these desperate pinch attempts where he loses the race to the puck (even when he has the advantage in distance to the puck) and he ends up allowing breakaway attempts to go the other way.

Sure, Ekblad plays ~20mins on a regular basis but MStaal did that too but I don't see anyone lamenting about his absence on the team. It all boils down to the quality of effort that he provides.

I'm not sure why you'd want to remind me about the title of the thread when I already said what Zito should offer: 2.5milx6. That's not going to happen because Ekblad and his agent want both money and term. He's not going to accept a 2 year deal where the mgmt could mitigate the risk and see where Ekblad is at both health and stats wise because he might be another Yandle in a year or two. At 2.5mil he could be bought out at a reasonable cap penalty but Zito strikes me as a fellow who wants to maintain a nice and tidy cap sheet where all the money spent is on active Panther players.

You're not really offering much proof or examples that really show that Ekblad is this massive deterrent to the team that needs to go unless he gets paid like a 6th dman. Your entire logic painted all over this thread is "lolheskatesbad". Criticizing the guy for playing the system the coach asks him to?

Imagine offering your decade long #1 defenseman who helped get you (the first year badly injured from round 1 onward mind you) to two Stanley Cup finals and a championship basically the same money Calgary offered Ryan Lomberg

 

[RogerRogerr]

You're not really offering much proof or examples that really show that Ekblad is this massive deterrent to the team that needs to go unless he gets paid like a 6th dman. Your entire logic painted all over this thread is "lolheskatesbad". Criticizing the guy for playing the system the coach asks him to?

Imagine offering your decade long #1 defenseman who helped get you (the first year badly injured from round 1 onward mind you) to two Stanley Cup finals and a championship basically the same money Calgary offered Ryan Lomberg

To be fair, being paid 2.5M would mean he's the second highest paid dman on the team.

 

[I am not exposed]

we have some evidence in front of us and that is - ekblad played top pair minutes as the panthers went through one of the most difficult paths to winning a stanley cup in history. (i think it was 6th on list using some modern model).

the difficulty rank of the path is not what's important, though. any path will include deep and skilled teams as rounds progress. here are his numbers from the playoffs last year.

GP	G	A	P	+/-	PIM	TOI/G
24	1	5	6	+4	16	22:33

for comparison's sake, montour had 11 points, 4 of which were PP. so that's the primary difference between the two. they played similar minutes overall, montour averaging 9 seconds more per game, explained completely by his presence on the PP. montour is two years older. his new contract is north of 7M/yr over 7 years.

sure, montour is a beast physically and more fluid/faster skater and that explains to some degree why a team would be willing to give him that term. but the numbers are the numbers. ekblad played the (much) more difficult minutes last postseason and we won every series.

i'm not saying winning the cup made him better. i'm saying we won the cup because he's better than you think. and there is hard evidence to support this assertion.

all that said, i don't think ek is going to get 7M from us. he almost certainly could on the open market, not based on the fact he's a champion, but based on the fact that's what players who can play his minutes and produce get paid.

i don't think he will get the same term as monty based on his injury history and i don't think he will ask for the same money here given the existing salary structure where you have players giving significant discounts to stay. but i do think he's extremely valuable at a lower number. whether zito feels he can get better value remains to be seen but there's a saying - a bird in hand is better than two in the bush.

Can you please provide this hard evidence? Because saying he played a lot of minutes isn't it.

Btw, I think Ekblad is okay as a mid pairing Dman currently. He gets his arse covered a lot when he's on the top pair.

His game will not age well. This spiel about look at all these minutes he played is something the agent will use when negotiating a new contract. Thankfully Zito seems quite astute and probably won't fall for such nonsense. By the time his next contract comes around, it should be a noticeable discount to what he is currently earning. I'm sure some GM will be out there thinking like you and offer him too much because he played a lot of minutes on a Stanley Cup run being supported by his defensive partner. Thankfully that will be there problem, not ours. As someone already mentioned, Marc Staal played 20:56 on our run to the final. Wow, top pairing minutes! But you don't see GMs queuing to pay him top dollar.

 

[Jean Luc Discard]

Can you please provide this hard evidence? Because saying he played a lot of minutes isn't it.

Btw, I think Ekblad is okay as a mid pairing Dman currently. He gets his arse covered a lot when he's on the top pair.

His game will not age well. This spiel about look at all these minutes he played is something the agent will use when negotiating a new contract. Thankfully Zito seems quite astute and probably won't fall for such nonsense. By the time his next contract comes around, it should be a noticeable discount to what he is currently earning. I'm sure some GM will be out there thinking like you and offer him too much because he played a lot of minutes on a Stanley Cup run being supported by his defensive partner. Thankfully that will be there problem, not ours. As someone already mentioned, Marc Staal played 20:56 on our run to the final. Wow, top pairing minutes! But you don't see GMs queuing to pay him top dollar.

https://thehockeynews.com/news/hot-seat-radar-on-cup-champion-panthers-ekblad-is-in-delicate-situation-while-zito-earned-job-security

Zito might be waiting until the NHL’s trade deadline to ratchet up the asking price for Ekblad, but it’s difficult to envision Ekblad getting a seven or eight-year contract extension with the Panthers. Florida’s embarrassment of riches throughout the lineup means very few, if any players are untouchable. And Ekblad – who has a modified no-trade clause allowing him to veto a deal to 12 teams of his choosing – can help choose his own exit route from the Panthers. Now that he’s been on a Cup winner, Ekblad doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone, but he’s still got a long road ahead in his NHL career, and the reality is the rest of his NHL days may not be spent with Florida.