Quote:
Originally Posted by stemit14
These experiences with players leaving the flames have made me wonder what adjustments need to be made by by the league to fix this issue. One of the trademarks of the days of the pre-salary cap era was that Detroit and New York just got all the good players… they could pay them whatever they want and all the players wanted to go there because they paid so much and (in the case of Detroit at least) they were always challenging for a cup.
That’s what this is reminding me of. Tarasenko has apparently told the Senators that he also prefers to be traded to Florida. Not sure exactly what the league needs to do but here are a few ideas:
1. Remove or limit NTCs. Will be tough to get the players to give up NTCs so it might just have to be that every team only gets 2-3 NTC contracts so you don’t have half your team dictating where they go.
2. Make it so contract extensions can be signed 2 years before they expire instead of 1 year. This would give the teams more time to gauge a players interest in re-signing and would allow for a potentially greater return in trade if they were trading a player (who won’t re-sign) with 2 years left on his deal instead of just one.
3. I know it’s unfair to players but maybe extend the RFA period by a year or two. Gives a team more control over a player till they are 27/28 and teams won’t have to buy as many UFA years.
4. Extend the max period of entry-level contracts to 5 years (instead of 3).
5. Strengthen the advantage in signing an extension with a team. Right now, signing an extension with a team lets them add an extra year to the deal. Make it so the max contract length a traded player or UFA player can be signed for is 6 years (instead of 7 years) but signing an extension with a team puts the maximum contract length to 8 years. This might help compensate for the money issue with players going to tax haven states like Florida to make more money.
Obviously doing all of these things is unrealistic but trying to implement a few of them might be possible. I’m not even sure if they will help much. If the league tried to make all these changes at once, there would definitely be another lockout. The hope would be these changes have two effects:
1. Smaller markets and Canadian markets don’t keep losing their talented players to teams in the US.
2. When they do have players that want to leave, the team will have more leverage in trading them if they don’t have a NTC and the team will be able to use the sign-and-trade more effectively by adding 2 full years to a contract signing. If the player that wants out chooses not to agree to a sign-and-trade, they will be denying themselves the financial security of two extra years on their contract. Having more leverage should net greater returns in trades so small market teams aren’t losing good players for pennies on the dollar.
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FWIW - giving Tarasenko some call in where he gets traded was allegedly part of the deal with him signing in Ottawa.
Edit: Tarasenko actually has a no trade clause - so it was negotiated in his contract that he'd be able to pick where he's traded.