Quote:
Originally Posted by Classic_Sniper
It wouldn't have been from me. I was more than willing to pay up for the franchise players of the team, even if I had to go slightly above what I'd be comfortable with. These are the franchise players of the team who lead your team in scoring every year; you pay and find the savings elsewhere.
Even dating back to 2021, all we heard was that Gaudreau wanted to finish his contract and sign with Philly. Well, in his final season press conference, he mentioned for the first time, that he'd be open to re-signing if Brad and ownership was happy with him. For me personally, that was all I needed to hear to get the ball moving. Then I remember feeling quite anxious by the summer when it hadn't been announced yet as Gaudreau's wedding was coming up. It always left me feeling uneasy that Johnny was marrying a Philly girl especially with the Chris Pronger's wife hating Edmonton fiasco.
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It's tough to know without knowing what the exact asks were.
My thought at the time was under $8M they should re-sign him without hesitation, $8-9M ask it would come down to what the return was on the trade market for him, and $9M+ they should have traded him.
In the end I still feel like that would been the right approach...but more and more I think they shouldn't hand out any 8 year contracts to players 29 or older unless you are sure they are true elite players.
Also not sure it's been posted yet but here's the first Kuzmenko interview from practice today -
https://www.nhl.com/flames/video/kuz...-6346311038112