Quote:
Originally Posted by bax
Another interesting thing to consider- many reports stated that Flames and Tkachuk both wanted to go long term. Friedman just a few days ago reported that they were discussing 5 and 6 year options.
I think it's likely that everyone involved realized the cap wasn't available this year to make that kind of deal. So they signed a deal that allows the Flames some flexibility as in there is no pressure to trade anyone off the roster and they can go back to the drawing board in 2 years and ink a big 5-8 year deal.
Maybe a bit of a stretch, but I bet the Flames wanted 6.75 over 3 years, but ended up giving the extra 250k as a sign on good faith. Let's meet in 2 years and get a long term deal done before arbitration hits.
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I think they were exceptionally close to achieving that. If I had to guess, had Kadri not nixed the trade (extra player would be flipped for around 1.5-2 mil overall cap space), Tkachuk would have agreed to a 6 year deal for around 8 ish soon afterwards. Unfortunately, things fell into place the way they did.