Mitch Marner: what now?

[Nik Bethune]

I guess anything's possible but insuring someone for money they willingly turn down just seems weird.

It's really pretty straightforward. All you're insuring is your future earning potential. The more you think an injury would cost you, the higher the value of the policy and inevitably the higher the premium. You or I could go out and get any sort of life insurance policy we wanted, value our life at whatever we wanted, and so long as we could afford the premiums they'd cover us.

And if that still sounds weird to you, well, this is an industry that insured a Movie Star's butt, so...

[OldTimeHockey]

And if that still sounds weird to you, well, this is an industry that insured a Movie Star's butt, so...

 Now, that I understand

[herman]

https://mapleleafshotstove.com/2019/06/28/toronto-maple-leafs-ben-hutton/

Very delicious

[Zee]

I had a dream Marner signed an offer sheet with Colorado for $13.6M

[Bender]

I had a dream Marner signed an offer sheet with Colorado for $13.6M

Please stop lol

[Zee]

I had a dream Marner signed an offer sheet with Colorado for $13.6M

Please stop lol

I can't control my dreams! I'm not a lucid dreamer.

[Zee]

After all this Dreger (Paul) throws out the potential 3 year bridge deal to get a Marner deal done.

[Guilt Trip]

After all this Dreger (Paul) throws out the potential 3 year bridge deal to get a Marner deal done.

Haha. Paul throwing crap at the wall.

[KW Sluggo]

I had a dream Marner signed an offer sheet with Colorado for $13.6M

That may not be a dream.

Montreal just offer sheeted Aho and if Carolina matches, Montreal will still have that money and sufficient cap space to come after Marner.

[Guilt Trip]

I had a dream Marner signed an offer sheet with Colorado for $13.6M

That may not be a dream.

Montreal just offer sheeted Aho and if Carolina matches, Montreal will still have that money and sufficient cap space to come after Marner.

Montréal lowballed this offer. You think the Habs are going to go over 10.5 mill? Not a chance

[cabber24]

Price is going down with the Aho contract comparable.

[Guilt Trip]

Price is going down with the Aho contract comparable.

Not according to Paul lol.

[Nik Bethune]

Apologies for the long post but there's something I've been thinking about re: Marner that I wanted to say.

A long time ago I read an article about some shady deals in Florida between the military and military suppliers or something(I forget exactly what) and one story always stood out in my mind. It was about a woman who basically hosted parties where business people and high ranking military people came and mingled and did deals. Anyways, one such deal was apparently being finalized and this woman spoke to the businessperson doing the deal about how maybe she should get a finders fee of like .1 percent or something. She apparently saw this as pretty reasonable given how she'd introduced the people making the deal.

Problem was, this was a multi-billion dollar deal. So that .1 percent represented millions of dollars. Millions of dollars she was naive enough to think a large company would essentially give her.

Anyways, that story comes to mind because I feel like something we're hearing a lot now about Mitch is that the Leafs have made a competitive offer, a fair offer and the huge gigantic offersheet that was rumoured probably isn't coming in so it's incumbent on Marner to find the middle ground, sign the deal and not sweat a million dollars here or there.

The problem with that idea though is that there's a very good likelihood that Marner isn't sweating any of this. He may very well have communicated to his agent that he wants to be a Leaf, that he wants to sign a deal of a certain length but that his agent is a highly paid professional who is paid to get him the best deal possible and that Marner is pretty content to just let Ferris do his job.

So despite hearing all this "Marner feels disrespected" or "Marner wants to entertain offer sheets" there's every chance that Mitch is out on a fishing boat somewhere fielding occasional calls from his agent but generally speaking not paying too much attention to what's going on.

Because what's the rush? Marner and Dubas both basically know he's the last piece and, given that they signed Johnsson and Kapanen, I bet Dubas probably knows roughly what i'll take to sign Marner and has budgeted appropriately. Now it's just a game of chicken. Dubas might be at 8/9.5 aav and Ferris may be at 8/11.5 or something and now it's just a matter of where they might meet.

And when, too. Marner might be very comfortable waiting at least until deep summer to see if Dubas blinks. And why not? So long as he's confident a deal gets done, this could be taking up next to nothing in mental real estate. His agent is negotiating for him, Marner's enjoying the off-season. The fact that his unsigned status is bugging some people posting on the internet won't matter to him. If the worst thing that happens to him is signing for 8/9.5 aav then that's a pretty worry free life.

So why not just sign now if 9.5 is acceptable to him? Again, that's what his agent does. If you're going to have an agent and pay him a hefty fee, let him do his business.

Will the end result potentially only be a couple of million dollars? Sure but as illustrated in the story above, those millions count. People want them. A big deal sports agent and a company like MLSE aren't going to be nonchalant about that much money if it's there to be made. Don't take it personally,  that's just what business negotiations are. All of the talking in the media or rumours or whatever...they very well may be just an aspect of it. Does it play with fans emotions? Yes. It's designed to.

But nobody seriously would expect a big company to just leave a couple millions around, just lk nobody should be shocked by someone like Marner wanting negotiating effectively for it.

[CarltonTheBear]

I wish that there was some sort of mechanism in the CBA that just sped up this process. I mean we see all this UFA deals coming together in less than a week but we're now probably going to see RFA negotiations drag into August and September pretty often. And considering the circumstances that you laid out that makes sense. There's no real rush on either side. But it just feels like such wasted time. Look at the Aho situation, the Canes were lowballing him hard to the point that they probably weren't even close to nearing Montreal's offer which they're now apparently "celebrating" (as they should). Presumably, Aho's people made that same offer to Carolina prior to going the offer sheet route and Waddell said no. Probably because he didn't feel like he had to "blink" yet.

I don't really know what the fix to all of this is. Move up the RFA signing deadline? Unless you move it to August, which seems extreme, I doubt that really changes too much. Maybe make it so after a certain date in the summer the compensation for offer sheets becomes a little relaxed? That could encourage more of these Aho-type deals where the player is pretty much just using it to get the contract he wants from his original team, but that would rely on other teams being willing to make an offer sheet that will 90% likely get matched.

[Bates]

I wish that there was some sort of mechanism in the CBA that just sped up this process. I mean we see all this UFA deals coming together in less than a week but we're now probably going to see RFA negotiations drag into August and September pretty often. And considering the circumstances that you laid out that makes sense. There's no real rush on either side. But it just feels like such wasted time. Look at the Aho situation, the Canes were lowballing him hard to the point that they probably weren't even close to nearing Montreal's offer which they're now apparently "celebrating" (as they should). Presumably, Aho's people made that same offer to Carolina prior to going the offer sheet route and Waddell said no. Probably because he didn't feel like he had to "blink" yet.

I don't really know what the fix to all of this is. Move up the RFA signing deadline? Unless you move it to August, which seems extreme, I doubt that really changes too much. Maybe make it so after a certain date in the summer the compensation for offer sheets becomes a little relaxed? That could encourage more of these Aho-type deals where the player is pretty much just using it to get the contract he wants from his original team, but that would rely on other teams being willing to make an offer sheet that will 90% likely get matched.

Arbitration Rights for all RFA's might help. Sadly the Teams were winning when they weren't available but that has turned and I think teams might like them now.