[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Sec214

In any good contract negotiation you need someone to be willing to drive your price point. Johnnys is 80+ million which Calgary did with 8x10. Johns representative lit the smoke signal with leaks of Calgary going above 80 Million, Previously offer before the season was the Kucherov 76. Multiple Eastern teams signal back that they can drive for roughly the same price tag of 80+ Million. Once you have multiple signals you no longer need to consider Calgary. These eastern teams will bid even some teams you won’t think about.

But he could have got exactly the same result by simply announcing earlier that he was going UFA, at which point all those Eastern teams could have bid on his services openly.

If the original bidder drops out of an auction – worse still, if it turns out that the seller never had any intention of accepting any bid from that bidder – then the bid is no good and nobody remaining in the auction has to worry about matching it.

There are reasons for a team to offer Gaudreau $80 million, but the Flames' defunct offer is not one.

Originally Posted by dino7c

I mean his agent could say look...we have 8x10.5 on the table here, if you want us to even consider going to UFA we need to be as close as possible ect.

And now he has gone UFA, his bridges are burnt, and that 8 x whatever is no longer on the table. So he can just suck it up and deal with the situation as it is now.

All these "leaks" aren't accidental

Nobody actually leaked a figure of 8x10.5. What was leaked a couple of days ago was 8x9.5, which was an initial offer that nobody expected Gaudreau to take. You don't build up a price for yourself by telling people that your existing employer is lowballing you.

Anyway, there is still no obligation for anyone to pay Gaudreau $84 million on his next contract. There is, in fact, no obligation for anyone to pay him at all. Every team that may have made him an informal offer was technically tampering, so none of those offers are legally binding. If I were running any of those teams, I'd be telling Mr. Gross to cut the crap, and I would make a lower bid.