Is NHL free agency primed for a disruption?
Why we may (or may not) finally see young stars signed to offer sheets
NHL free agency is upon us.
The negotiating period is open, and players can officially sign contracts with new teams starting on July 1 at noon ET. In the meantime, they're allowed to re-sign with their incumbent teams whenever they want. But most of the action won't come til Canada Day.
To get you up to speed for the big day, let's look at the two main types of free agents: restricted and unrestricted. Here's what those labels mean, who the top players are in each category, and why the table is set for (maybe) a major disruption to the system:
Unrestricted free agents
These players are allowed to sign with any team they want. Their current teams can't do anything to stop them from leaving (other than make the best offer) and the team gets no compensation for losing a player.
This year's class of UFAs was always considered relatively weak, and it got even weaker when a few key players decided to re-sign with their current teams before hitting free agency. Defenceman Erik Karlsson stayed with San Jose for an eight-year contract that pays him an average of $11.5 million US per year, forward Jeff Skinner re-upped with Buffalo for $9 million per year, and forward Kevin Hayes grabbed about $7 mil per from Philly.
The top three UFAs left are all Columbus Blue Jackets: forwards Artemi Panarin and Matt Duchene, and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. All very good players, but hardly household names. Same for Joe Pavelski: the San Jose captain is one of the NHL's most reliable veterans, and he scored 38 goals last season, but he turns 35 in a couple of weeks.
Anytime there's a shortage of high-end players in free agency, second- and third-tier guys usually get overpaid. Teams with money and salary-cap space to spend are afraid to come away empty-handed, so they'll get into bidding wars even when they shouldn't.
The top candidate to get a head-shaking contract this year is Tyler Myers. He's a mid-level defenceman who's 29 years old and hasn't had more than 37 points in a season since his rookie year. But he's been anointed the best defenceman on the market, and rumour has it he could land up to a seven-year contract in the $50-million range. Vancouver looks like it might bite.
Jake Gardiner will get paid too. Everyone focuses on his gaffes, but he's still a good defenceman — something the Leafs can't really afford to lose. But they need to devote most of their cap space to re-signing restricted free agent Mitch Marner, so Gardiner looks like he's gone.
The maximum salary allowed in the NHL right now is about $16 million. No free agent is expected to command that much, but Panarin will probably come the closest. The "Bread Man" should live up to his name and double his $6-million salary from last season.
Restricted free agents
These are more complicated. Your typical RFA is a younger player who hasn't accumulated enough service time in the NHL to be eligible for unrestricted free agency. RFAs can't just sign a contract with a new team and bolt. They can only sign what's known as an offer sheet. It's like a contract, but the player's current team has the right to either match it and keep him, or let him go and receive a compensation package from the team that signed him. The incumbent team has seven days to decide.
Offer sheets are extremely rare. Since the salary cap was introduced for the 2005-06 season, only eight have been signed (all but one were matched). And there hasn't been one since 2013. NHL general managers are reluctant to do offer sheets for several reasons:
The compensation: The more money you offer an RFA, the more draft picks you have to give his old team if they decide not to match. And the cost gets very steep if you want a really good player. For example, if your offer sheet averages out to between $8,454,872-$10,568,589 per year, you have to give up two first-round picks, a second-rounder and a third. Anything more than that, and it'll cost you a whopping four first-round picks. There are a few quirks that make things even tougher on the team signing the offer sheet, and I recommend this piece if you want to know about those.
The waiting period: Seven days is a long time. The incumbent team can make up its mind in the first five seconds, then wait the full week before announcing its decision to match. Meanwhile, the offer-sheet team is hamstrung because it has to keep the cap space open. By the time the other team announces it will match, there's a good chance the other top free agents have already signed. The music stops, and all the chairs are full.
Peer pressure: Offer sheets are perfectly legal, and fans are always clamouring for more of them, but many GMs consider them a cheap shot. They've even been described as predatory. The feeling is that the incumbent team always matches anyway, so all you're doing is driving up the price of the contract and messing up your fellow executive's salary-cap situation. Compared to other major sports leagues, the NHL is pretty chummy. The executive class is still made up of mostly old-school, conservative guys who don't like to challenge convention. And one of those conventions is not poaching another guy's RFA. Back in 2007, an offer sheet for the forgettable Dustin Penner ignited a months-long war of words between Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe and Anaheim GM Brian Burke. It ended with Burke offering to "rent a barn" in Upstate New York after he heard Lowe challenged him to a fistfight. Yes, this actually happened.
Is this the "year of the RFA?"
Having said all that, this year's crop of RFAs is unusually tempting. A ton of great young players are on the market. That's raised hopes that we might finally see some offer sheets. There are too many excellent players to go into detail, but here are the top ones quickly:
Mitch Marner (Toronto): He wants a lot of money after leading a very good Leafs team last season with 94 points. Toronto probably has (barely) enough cap space to take care of him, but it doesn't want to spend all of it on him. It needs to sign some other guys too.
Brayden Point (Tampa Bay): Tied for sixth in the league with 41 goals.
Mikko Rantanen (Colorado): Finished 17th in the league with 87 points.
Sebastian Aho (Carolina): Led the surprising Hurricanes to the Eastern Conference final after scoring 30 goals and 83 points.
Patrik Laine (Winnipeg): One of the best pure goal-scorers in the league, but he's coming off a down year and his development has stalled in other aspects of the game.
Matthew Tkachuk (Calgary): Had 34 goals and 77 points to help Calgary surprisingly post the best record in the Western Conference.
Kyle Connor (Winnipeg): Second on the team with 34 goals.
That's… a lot of guys. And there are a bunch more solid players too. So any GM with the guts (and the cap space) to tender an offer sheet has plenty of options. Or it could go the other way: it seems like almost every team has its own RFA to worry about, so maybe everyone just puts their energy into keeping their own guys and we get another offer-sheet-less summer. When it comes to the NHL, you'll never go broke betting on the status quo.
Who's got the cap space?
The salary cap for next season has been set at $81.5 million. According to capfriendly.com (which has all sorts of useful NHL salary info), Colorado has the most projected cap space at about $39.2 million. Next is Ottawa ($33M), Columbus ($28.6M), New Jersey ($25.8M) and Florida (both $23.9M). Plenty of other teams have room to add free agents, and you can check every team's cap space on capfriendly's page.
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