Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
To build off this point, we had a fairly unique situation in Gaudreau and Tkachuk wanting to leave. More common than Americans wanting to stay home has always been great players wanting to be on great, stable teams.
Nobody wanted to be on the Oilers even during the first stretch of McDavid. A generational talent couldn't even bring people in because they were a tire fire. When they started to have some success, they started luring better players on better deals. (they're still garbage, but that's a different thing).
It's a bit of a catch-22 because you want to make sure 100% you can afford guys like Coronato, Wolf, or Honzek if/when they pop. But you also need to make sure you're a team they want to play for (especially as a mid/small market team). The cap is always something you can figure out. Vegas just won the cup while being some absurd number over the cap. Boston cleared $6M off the cap for a fat bit of nothing. A lot is going to change 3-6 years from now when (hopefully) the young guys we have now pop and ask for big numbers.
American teams like Buffalo and Columbus are no strangers to losing good players to greener pastures. The value to players in sticking with a competitive team shouldn't be understated, regardless of how much people want to believe one terrible year was the true peak of everyone on this roster.
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Buffalo was recently able to sign 3 RFA’s to 7 year deals, eating up 6 UFA years for Thompson, 3 years for Cozens and 3 years for Samuelsson. It is definitely possible to be a bad team and still have young players sign longterm if you have the money to make it worth their while.
Ottawa pulled off a similar move with Stutzle, Tkachuk, Norris and Chabot so signing young players to long term contracts does not appear contingent on having a competitive team.