TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun joins Gino Reda to discuss Drake Batherson’s new contract with the Senators ahead of Wednesday’s deadline for the eight-year max deals, how important the signing was for the Sens franchise, some key restricted free agents who are still looking for contracts and more.
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Gino Reda: Huge deadline is looming. The new CBA kicks in tonight at midnight, and at that point, eight-year deals come off the table. To discuss that and the impact it could have on a lot more, here’s our insider, Pierre LeBrun.
Pierre, we’ll talk more about the eight years coming off the table momentarily from a league-wide standpoint, but how important was it for the Ottawa Senators to get Drake Batherson signed to his new eight-year, $86 million deal?
Pierre LeBrun: Yeah, this is gigantic for the Ottawa Senators. Let’s start macro, and then we’ll go into micro.
Brady Tkachuk forced his way out of the nation’s capital. This was important for the Ottawa Senators to message to their fan base that core guys want to stay. Yeah, one guy wanted to go, but we’ve got core guys that want to stay. This is monumental from that perspective, especially for an organization that in the past has also lost the likes of Mark Stone and Erik Karlsson, among others, because of the same reason: money was an issue under former ownership, and they couldn’t afford players.
Obviously, this was different with Brady Tkachuk after the season, but the point being really important for the Senators to send a loud message. This is a core player in Drake Batherson, and he’s here for a very long time. That is huge.
But this negotiation wasn’t easy, Gino. I’m told that when both sides really got going at the combine in June, the initial offer from the Senators had a salary more in the eights, and obviously that wasn’t going to get it done for Batherson. And when you look at the contract comparables in terms of Adrian Kempe in LA and Alex Tuch in Washington, where they ended up at $10.75 million a year makes a lot of sense for both sides. A very good news day for the Ottawa Senators.
Reda: Getting back to the eight-year term now that’s going to come off the table tonight with a new kick into the CBA. Initially, we had the impression that was something the players really wanted, was the ability to sign for eight years and that the owners and GMs didn’t want eight years. They said, let’s make seven-year max, but that’s not necessarily true right across the board, is it, Pierre?
LeBrun: It’s not true anymore in terms of the team side. I mean, listen, I’ll take you back to the 2012 NHL lockout where Bill Daly, Deputy Commissioner, famously said, this is the hill we’re going to die on. They wanted to bring down the maximum eight years so badly. And in fact, the league didn’t get their way at the time. It remained eight years.
But the league finally did in this CBA because in this new CBA, which kicks in on Wednesday, the max to re-sign your own players is seven years and the max for UFA on the open market changing teams is six years. Pretty significant. The weird thing is it’s the clubs that are rushing to get the eight years for right under the wire here. We saw Ryan Leonard in Washington on this day a couple of weeks ago with Cale Makar, the most important contract of the offseason. And believe me, Cale Makar is getting paid huge with that record contract. But the Avalanche saw a huge silver lining in getting the eight years, Gino.
And so that’s what you’re seeing right now. It’s teams realizing this salary landscape is exploding over the next several years. If we can get a young player or a player in his prime for eight years now before the deadline, let’s do it.
Reda: NHL camps are opening up right across the league this week, and there are still some key restricted free agents that are looking for contracts. That includes, of course, Adam Fantilli in Columbus, Cutter Gauthier in Anaheim. The news on this is changing moment by moment, but as we’re speaking, Pierre, what’s the latest on those two fronts?
LeBrun: So let’s start with Adam Fantilli in Columbus. Both sides were still pretty far apart as of this morning. Now again, both sides were expected to talk again. So as we saw with Drake Batherson 24 hours ago, Gino, Drake Batherson and the Senators were still far apart, but they finally got serious late on Monday night.
So that could happen here with Fantilli, but certainly as of this morning, there’s a lot of ground to cover between the Blue Jackets and Fantilli. And it’s not from a lack of trying. There have been tons of offers and counter-offers all summer long on that one.
In the meantime, on Cutter Gauthier, there was a sense of progress as I reported on Monday on that front. Part of that is because the Ducks made an improved new offer on Sunday. Some of that offer had more front-loaded money in it, which is really important to Cutter Gauthier and his agent, Kurt Overhardt. Remember, we’re focused on the eight years going off the table with the old CBA, do you know what else going off the table? The amount of front-loaded money and signing bonus money, the structure is getting better for teams and worse for players in the new CBA. A lot of agents, by the way, are not thrilled by that.
So that has been a big issue here in this Cutter Gauthier negotiation because while there was progress in the last couple of days, they’re still at it. They don’t have a done deal yet. They’re meeting again on Tuesday, later on Tuesday, Gino, so this may change before people even watch this. But if they don’t get a deal done before tonight and the CBA expires, this could be a real problem in the Cutter Gauthier negotiation because now all that front-loaded money changes. So pressure on both sides when they meet again today in Anaheim to finalize this deal. We’ll see if they can.
Reda: There’s so much going on right now, Pierre. Really, really busy time for general managers. It would be a bad time for a team not to have a GM. On that note, the Red Wings just named Sean Horcoff as their new interim GM. They’ve been looking since Steve Yzerman moved to an advisory role back in July. Not an ideal situation for the Red Wings, but given all the decisions they need to make, they really couldn’t wait any longer, could they, Pierre?
LeBrun: Yeah, I mean, I will tell you that people around the league are a bit perplexed as to how this search process has been conducted. Having said that, they bought themselves more time here, Gino.
Some important statements and updates from Red Wings ownership on this day. They give Horcoff the interim job, which means that he now has, as they say, full authority to go ahead in terms of the day-to-day business. And that’s important because, for example, RFA Simon Edvinsson still is unsigned, although he has told the Red Wings he’ll show up at camp regardless of whether he signed or not.
But those negotiations were on hold while the Red Wings were doing their GM search. Now the question is, what does full authority look like for Sean Horcoff? Because my sense of the situation was that the Red Wings were operating like they couldn’t do more than short-term deals until they figured out who they were hiring as GM. Does that change now because they’ve announced Horcoff as interim GM? I don’t have the answer to that, but obviously signing Edvinsson is a huge priority for Detroit, so we’ll see if they can get that done in the coming days.
But in the meantime, the Red Wings also pointed out in those statements, Gino, that Horcoff himself is a legitimate candidate to ultimately become the new GM of the Red Wings, although they continue to meet and talk with other candidates here. And now the pressure’s a bit off. They’ve given themselves more time to finish that process.
Reda: A difficult, awkward situation. That’s it for the early version of Insider Trading, but use continues to flow in. The full version with Pierre, Dregs and CJ’s coming up on the early edition of SportsCentre.
