Curt

Hey, he broke the Eichel trade! But seriously, Peters is not a journalist. He has connections in NHL circles so he sometimes hears or asks people about certain things, but he is not out there doing his due diligence, verifying information through multiple sources or anything like that. He’s just a guy who knows some people. Just take him for who he is. Sometimes he’ll be right. Sometimes he won’t. No sense in getting mad at him about it. (Not saying you are, but some people do.)

My issue is just that, if you see Power as a guy who will be worth $8-9M (in today’s money) in a few years, and you bridge him. 3-4 years from now, that $8-9M is going to be $9.5-10.5M because of the cap increases. For me, if you can sign him to an 8 year extension under $9M, I probably pull the trigger on that.

Semi related question. What was your opinion of Dahlin after his second season? Young players improve. Some of the most common areas of improvement are strength, defensive zone details, and shot.

Capfriendly lists the cap % based on the cap at the time of signing. Dahlin’s contract is 13.17% of the current cap, 83.5, but it is 12.5% of the 88M cap projected for next season.

If you want to get team friendly deals like you described in 1, you need to do what you say what you don’t want to do in 2. You need to make bets on player projection. Thompson, Cozens, and Samuelsson hadn’t proven that they were worth those contracts when they signed them. Adams made those deals because he believed that they would be. So you could probably sign Power long term for $8.5-9M right now, or sign him to a lesser bridge deal, then sign him long term for $11M three years from now.

I honestly don’t think that Dahlin’s deal has any real implications on Power’s next contract. They are in very different situations.

Ok. It’s $0.5M more than I expected, but if it’s going to be a tad high then I’m glad that it is 8 instead of 7 or 6. That was probably just the cost of getting him locked up for the full 8 years. I think he is the future captain. Dahlin under contract for 9 more seasons! Woo hoo!

Short for Jaymes and Frydrych

There are plenty of guys who pass question #1. We’re they saying that Sakic was the only one who did?

In MLB this is definitely happening. Teams are locking up elite young talent to big contracts very early. Sometimes before before they even completed one MLB season. In the NBA, it doesn’t happen after one year because the contract structures don’t really allow for that, but teams often fall all over themselves to pay their top young guys as soon as they can.

Regarding salaries increasing with the cap, that’s true, but also only part of the reason that Dahlin could make more than Makar or Fox. There is also the issue of RFA years versus UFA years. UFA years generally are a good amount more expensive to get a guy under contract than RFA years are. This is because players have a lot money re control and leverage over those years are are thus able to command more money. Both those other guys’ contracts started directly after their ELCs, which means that 4 out of their 6 or 7 contract years are RFA years. Compare this to Dahlin signing after a 3 year bridge deal. This means that only 1 out of 6 or 7 or 8 years would be would be an RFA year, the rest would be UFA years. That is also going to slant Dahlin’s contract towards being more expensive. You can never really just look at the raw AAV numbers of other players to decide how much someone should be paid. It’s going to be influenced by some factors that are a little more nuanced than that.

I know right. It’s weird that this is very rarely done by any team.

Well yeah, because the Bills are favored by a fair amount, so the bookmakers cut gets kind of buried in the difference. Yeah, I’m taking about the spread. Spreads and over/unders are often equal prices on both sides, but not always. For example, just look at this other NFL game. The spread is very close, so you can see the moneyline prices are both negative in this case as well. It’s because of the book’s cut. It’s always like that.

Hmm, don’t bet much, do you? It’s minus on both sides because the bookmaker takes a cut. That’s how it is for all sports betting.

Same, same. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Also, anyone think the Sabres can get 100 points? That’s +220. Bet $100, get $220 profit if you win.

I was more so looking for specifics. I might agree or disagree with you. I have no idea. Your proclamations are too vague. If your only point is that the cap will go up, yeah, we know. Publicly rumored to be going up $4-5M each of the next two offseason.

Oh, I do recall you repeating it ad nauseum, please believe that. What do you mean by “approaching” though? Is that $95M?, $99M? And 5 years? Is that the 2028-29 season? Perhaps Power is considering a shorter deal as opposed to 6+ years for this reason. I have no idea.

Recent D who were drafted top-5, played like #1 D in the making, and then signed 6+ year extensions of off their ELC’s; they have generally signed for 10-11% of the cap. This is guys like Doughty, Ekbland, Pieterangelo, Heiskanen, Makar. The cap is 83.5 this coming season, and rumored to be going up to 87-88M the next. So maybe if Power plays very well this season and the cap goes up to $88M, maybe he could get close to $9.5M max on a 6+ year extension, but that would be the true max max that I think is even plausible.

Well that’s one less thing to worry about I guess.

I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by “inspire confidence“. Did it inspire confidence that he was gradually improving as a player over the course of 3-4 years? I think everyone would agree that last year’s 2nd half was the best he has played, but you kind of made it sound like he was basically the same, kinda crappy player for 4 1/2 years, then had a really good 1/2 season, and that seems kind of fluky. I’m saying that he showed a fair amount of gradual improvement over 4 1/2 years, then had a really good 1/2 season, and it doesn’t seem completely flukey. The truth is that he probably isn’t going to be the guy from last season’s 2nd half going forward, because if you take any player’s best half season from a 5 year sample, they probably aren’t going to live up to that over the long term. However, I think he will be a pretty good middle-6 player going forward. As for point totals and GP, if I have to choose between raw point totals, without GP, and Pts/game, I’d say that pts/game is much more useful to analyze. That’s all I was saying.

Why are you focusing on goals for a players whose strengths are playmaking a puck possession? And listing out point totals while ignoring the number of games played? Commonnmann His point production for his 5 NHL seasons: Pts/Game: 0.32, 0.29, 0.54, 0.48, 0.72 Pts/60: 1.4, 1.4, 2.0, 1.8, 2.7 Pts/60 ES: 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.4, 2.3 Looks like an upward trajectory to me.

I have to agree with @GASabresIUFAN on this one. I think Mitts has shown fairly steady improvement, interrupted by periodic injuries. His first two years, he was pretty terrible, the next two he was decent, then last season he was better than decent.

Agree regarding using FA to fill mid tier roster holes as opposed to going big game hunting. The goalie situation is the one that really bothers me. It should be better. Levi should have a reliable guy to share the crease with. There wasn’t much goalie movement this offseason, but it’s a multi year issue that Adams has to be considered responsible for. Hopefully Levi is good, Comrie/UPL are serviceable, and it’s not a real problem. Kind of beating a dead horse here though.

Thanks, that’s good!

I agree. Just a random thought to add on. I hope Cozens is able to fill out more over the next few years. He has sort of a slight/lean frame so it may be tough for him, but if he is 6’3” 195 right now and can get to say 210, he would be a real beast. He has the mentality to take advantage of it too.