[mikeecho]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I may be) but I seem to remember something similar with the last Gio negotiation. Word slips that Gio wants a huge pay day, people go crazy about how insane his ask is, and then he eventually signs for a much lower number. When asked, the response from Gio was that he never asked for anything close to what was reported.

It's always very curious when info like this appears in the media. Let's face it... Francis didn't just happen to accidentally come along and find someones negotiation notes or run into someone who was drunk and blabbed by accident. Someone on the record but off the record conveniently dropped him some info for a reason, and it's all part of the negotiation process.

If I had to guess, someone from the Flames gave him this nugget to run with to start creating pressure on Johnny who is allegedly asking for a crazy pay day.

In the end, I'll guess that Johnny signs for much less and his camp will say that they never asked for anything close to what was being reported (although they certainly will have asked for more than he ends up signing for).

**That whole, both sides wont talk about negotiations so we asked some agents part is his way of protecting the source in the negotiations. If this was really a story of what other agents think, then it'd be nothing more than an easy tweet as opposed to a story.