I am finding this very intriguing.
When you take into account that RFA years are worth less than UFA years you have almost to negotiate each year separately.
JG's agent and many here will say his value should go up as he gets more time in the league. While the Flames want this, they don't want to overpay for future forecasts, particularly based on only two years of actual data. Although, if they agree to jump to say 8 for the final three years then they are doing exactly that forecasting so it is hard for them to say he won't improve during his RFA years.
On the other hand, BT wants to pay as little as possible for the RFA years but at the risk of pissing off his star player so that he may not even get to the UFA years.
If JG starts at 6, 6.5, 6.75, 7, 7.25 then 8, 8, 8. it provides a scaling of his salary during RFA for an average of 7.1875. But if we are willing to assume he will continue to develop, why would he agree to stay at 8 for three years of UFA? It easily devolves into a pissing match over every year.
Unless they only talk AAV then the negotiation gets way easier. JG says he wants 64. BT says we want, say, 56. Then it is just negotiating a valid midpoint and plugging in the numbers.
Intriguing.
I would give almost anything to get a behind the scenes play by play of these sorts of negotiations. Fascinating.
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