Quote:
Originally Posted by madmike
The issue with Gaudreau waiting until free agency to decide what he wants to do is it handcuffs the Flames with other moves. They can't really do anything until Gaudreau makes a decision.
If Gaudreau waits too long, the Flames could lose the opportunity to look at other FAs like Forsberg. If they don't get a commitment from him before the deadline it might be better to just move on.
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Yup. And that's part of the leverage play. The longer Gaudreau waits, the better is his position becomes relative to the Flames organization.
Gaudreau's camp, from a purely financial point of view, has every incentive to hold their cards as tight as possible and use that to force as much money out of the Flames as possible.
IMO silence isn't necessarily a negative thing. If Gaudreau really wants to leave and test the UFA market, it would make some sense for him to let that leak out. As then he'd give other teams as much chance to start putting together their best offers as possible.
The other side of the equation is that we have no idea what the Flames actually know. For all we know, Gaudreau has already told them no.
At the end of the day, I believe anyways, that Gaudreau is not totally concerned with cash. If he's leaving Calgary, it'll be because he wants to be closer to home and always intended to go back.