Quote:
Originally Posted by cannon7
Disagree. I think GMs sense of self preservation will prevail. There's plenty of examples of these big name NTCs going awry and now the Thornton situation highlights what happens when there's bad blood between a GM and a NTC.
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I think the immediate sense of self preservation will always trump the worry about self preservation at some point in the future. If you know that you could get fired tomorrow for refusing to give a player a NTC, you're not going to worry about the fact that giving him the NTC could lead to you getting fired 2 years from now.
If you're a GM who's facing the possibility of having to tell your owner that the face of the franchise (who no one could ever imagine trading) will be signing as a UFA with another team because you refused to give him a NTC/NMC, you're going to have second thoughts about holding steadfast to your "No NTC/NMC" stance.
Also, situations like this, where the player absolutely refuses to even consider a trade, are so rare, that it's not likely to significantly change anyone's opinion of their value. On top of that, situations where a team does a complete 180 less than a year after signing the extension are even more rare than a player refusing to waive his NTC/NMC. Both things happening together is extremely unlikely to happen again.
It's sort of like the issue with College draft picks refusing to sign with the team that drafted them and instead opting to go to free agency after graduating. It happens so rarely still, and so many more players do sign with the team that drafted them, that there's value in drafting college bound players, despite that one small risk.
Plus, there's the other factor that every GM in the NHL thinks he's smarter than most of the other GMs (I don't think you can make it as an NHL GM if you don't think this), so even if they see a colleague make a big mistake, they don't think it's something they'd ever do.