The excellent news is that the Rangers, and with seemingly excellent purpose, are unconcerned over the prospect of a suggestion sheet being offered to Kaapo Kakko as negotiations on a bridge extension with the restricted free agent proceed at a considerably mystifyingly sluggish tempo.
Ah, however right here’s the rub.
Is it actually excellent news that no workforce within the league believes it's price roughly $4 million a 12 months to poach the 21-year-old Finn from a cap-constrained Blueshirts group that might have basically no strategy to match such a suggestion sheet?
Certainly the compensation of a second-round draft choose going the opposite manner on a suggestion sheet with an annual common worth of as much as $4,201,488 wouldn’t appear a deterrent in alternate for the participant simply three years faraway from being chosen second total within the draft.
Or does the absence of a suggestion sheet — and even the specter of one at this level — mirror Kakko’s singular want to remain in New York and make it in New York? There's zero indication that the correct wing or his agent, Mike Liut, has solicited curiosity from some other workforce.
And/or maybe that is merely NHL basic managers conducting enterprise as standard, eschewing the provide sheet as a instrument to accumulate gamers. There's the uncommon exception, however GMs usually really feel provide sheets can be matched and their very own workforce then will grow to be susceptible to retaliation.
Once more, although, on this case, Rangers basic supervisor Chris Drury could be all however helpless to match a $4 million (per) bid on Kakko. Plus, the cap restraints that loom over the franchise would forestall the Rangers from a retaliatory strike for not less than one other three years.
Kakko is on the market, however he isn’t.
That’s excellent news for the Rangers.
Isn’t it?
The Panthers seem to have grow to be a vacation spot workforce, lastly benefiting from their location in a no-tax state on this uneven hard-cap panorama that the NHL and NHLPA have failed to handle — and certainly have promulgated — in a sequence of collective bargaining agreements.
Perhaps, with Matthew Tkachuk’s acquisition, the followers in Florida will lastly discover, the Puddy Tats rating twenty fourth in each NHL attendance (14,811) and % of capability (76.9) final 12 months whereas successful the Presidents’ Trophy.
Is it too quickly to pencil in Jonathan Huberdeau and Pierre-Luc Dubois on the Canadiens’ first line in 2024-25?
Calgary GM Brad Treliving was nimble in working his manner out of the nook during which he was put by Tkachuk, the acquisitions of Huberdeau (30-85-115) and top-four defenseman MacKenzie Weegar possible permitting the Flames to stay an higher echelon workforce even accounting for Johnny Gaudreau’s defection.
But when the Flames can't signal Huberdeau and/or Weegar, every of whom is a pending unrestricted free agent, the franchise can be obligated to maneuver both or each as blue-chip leases on the deadline and never repeat the 2022 Gaudreau “Eleventh Hour” error.
Sure, for positive, the Panthers grow to be a harder workforce to play in opposition to by swapping Huberdeau for Tkachuk and grow to be a extra singular menace to the Lightning of their alligator alley confrontation.
By the best way, we appear to have left out simply how cutthroat Tampa Bay GM Julien BriseBois (and by extension, Jeff Vinik’s possession) was in forcing Ryan McDonagh to waive his full no-trade clause for a workforce of his selection beneath menace of being positioned on waivers and being claimed by a ne’er-do-well.
There is no such thing as a have to shed tears for No. 27, who selected to go to a Nashville membership that's bulking up, however the scenario is consultant of why no-move clauses are so treasured.
However when the Oren Koules-Len Barrie possession pulled the identical maneuver in 2008 to pal of the column Dan Boyle, the execs had been trashed.
(By me, even!)
If Lou Lamoriello’s insistence on holding Semyon Varlamov as a $5 million backup to Ilya Sorokin is proof that the Islanders GM thinks his workforce goes to need to play a season of 3-2 video games, nicely, I’m somewhat skeptical that represents the path to success.
I ponder. Is it a cap-space concern, contract ask, or analysis of expertise and roster necessities (or a mix of the entire above) that's stopping the Rangers from re-upping Tyler Motte on the expense of holding Dryden Hunt ($762,500) on the squad?
Once more, although, if it’s one other $500,000, that quantities to a distinction of $2.325 million of area on the deadline that Drury should do all the things in his energy to protect.
If Tkachuk may shift seamlessly to proper wing final season after 5 years within the NHL enjoying on his pure left, why does it look like the Rangers have an existential disaster with all their natural-born lefties?
David Quinn is without doubt one of the most compassionate, caring folks I've met in my lifetime on this business, and am delighted he has acquired a second probability in San Jose from not too long ago employed GM Mike Grier, with whom he shares a BU bloodline.
There's each purpose to consider that Quinn, who was not helped in any respect his last season in New York by a administration that refused to handle the 2020 bubble debacle, has acknowledged that his up-close-and-personal fashion doesn't essentially translate throughout the board within the NHL and that he should permit his vets extra respiratory room … on the ice, on the bench, within the room.
One factor for positive, although. The younger’uns on this Sharks workforce that's in an identical reset scenario as had been the Rangers when Quinn was employed — speak about type-casting — will obtain an schooling and basis in enjoying 200-foot hockey.
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