Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
The revisionist history on this is ridiculous.
The Flames negotiated with Tkachuk during a time the assumption was the cap would explode with the new TV deal. Matthews set a precedent signing a huge money deal with the Leafs for only 5 years.
Tkachuk was in line to ask for over $10M per on a 6-8 year deal that summer. This board completely $hit on him for his performance at $7M last year. Imagine if he made an additional 3-4M?
If the Flames didn’t want a bridge I don’t think they were getting more than 5 years of term with Matthew
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Also people talk about Matthew and Brady like they are actually comparable players at this point of their careers:
Matthew was coming off a 0.96 PPG season, and 0.78 PPG for his career while also being a strong defensive play driver, Brady is coming off a 0.64 PPG season, and 0.63 PPG for his career while being poor defensively.
A long term deal around $9M still would have been the right move for Matthew, but I get why Flames went with a bridge to try to be able to add more pieces around this core and keep the team that just finished first in the conference together.