Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
Montreal came for the king, and they missed.
Sebastian Aho is a #1C. Or at least that's what he looks like. Those are the hardest things in the sport to acquire. The player is 21. Give him 7/$70M with all the bonus structures you did before, or don't waste our time.
Tom Dundon just gave the AAF I don't know how many millions only to shutter the league a week later. He may not want to pay Aho all that money in cash, but it's a cap league with a salary floor - if he's going to have to spend money anyway, he's going to spend it on a player who puts asses in seats and sells jerseys instead of three scrubs.
I truly think the only way offer sheets work is if you price the player out of the team's cap. You can't just throw some cash around and hope to intimidate a small market because they're a small irrelevant dustheap in the universe of hockey. The cost of not matching is every good young player you ever get.
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In general, I think everyone will agree this is accurate.
In this case, I think MTL was likely acting on some intel that suggested the CAR owner might not have the capital on hand to pay the bonus, up front... if so, they DID, in fact, swing for the fences as they attempted to steal a primary talent on a reasonable contract... a huge coup, if they ended up being lucky enough for it to work.
I don't get the perspective that MTL made a mistake here. They took a stab at a player, with no risk whatsoever. There is obvious risk involved when signing a player to an inflated contract. Sure, they could have offered an AAV of $11M over that same term, but would that have been a 'win'?? Obviously MTL doesn't think so. At the very least, there would be significant risk involved.
To suggest they made a mistake implies that MTL sees the player as worth more than what they offered... or that were willing to acquire the player "at all costs", which I feel is obviously false. They took a free spin, and it looks like they won't win the jackpot, but they likely weren't expecting to do so.