Thursday 4 July 2019

How do you spell excitement? C-H-A-R-I-O-T

Brace yourselves: I'm not happy.  I don't like it.

 Another Jet takes off: Ben Chiarot signs 3-year deal with Montreal Canadiens

1)  It's days like these I start to rue Karl Alzner.  Mostly, I deal with it, every team has a shitty player on an unmovable contract.  The Canucks have Loui Eriksson.  The Oilers have Lucic, the Flames have James Neal.  The Rangers have Shattenkirk, Staal, although those guys are on the team playing, our boy is in Laval.  

It's hard to squawk about Korl when the Canucks are stuck with Loui and a Luongo cap recapture of $3M for three years, and I'm subjected to the uproar concerning that every day.  But now that we went back to the well and took another veteran UFA defensive type who hits and plays well in his zone, because we whiffed on Korl, it's harder to ignore him.

2)  The scouting report on Ben Chiarot:

SCOUTING REPORT
Has the requisite size all National Hockey League teams need along the blueline, and he displays the ability to use it as well. Was a good point producer in the junior ranks. Still a little raw in the defensive zone, he needs to tighten up and limit his mistakes with the puck in order to maximize his big-league potential as a defensive type.
Long Range Potential:Big, stay-at-home defenseman.

I was seeing Jordie Benn's departure as a positive, that we'd maybe be forced to live and die with Mete, Kulak and Reilly, fleet puck-movers, we'd see d-men pinching and rushing the puck.

Nope.

3)  Putting a positive spin on things, maybe Ben Chiarot can/will be an asset?  Maybe he plays decently next year, like Jordie Benn season this year +, and we can trade him in Year 2 or Year 3 of this deal?  Once Alex Romanov comes over and takes over in the Top 4?

4)  I'd mostly given up on Jake Gardiner, but was hopeful we could work something out with Calgary and T.J. Brodie.  They're desperate to sell, need to shed salary to re-up Matthew Tkachuk, I was thinking we take on James Neal too and he finds his game again.  So from dreaming of T.J. Brodie with Shea Weber, to contemplating Ben Chiarot on our Top 4, that's quite the letdown.

5)  We maybe can still offer-sheet Charlie McAvoy?  Or Xavier Ouellet takes a giant leap over the summer?  Jayden Struble is a huge surprise at training camp?  No?

Hmmmmfff...
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Monday 1 July 2019

The Canadiens extend an offer sheet to Sebastian Aho, who accepts it!

The Canadiens' Marc Bergevin seemed like he was up to something, trading away Andrew Shaw and Nicolas Deslauriers yesterday, clearing away more cap space for a big July 1 move, it figured.

Well, he took a big swing today, extending an offer-sheet to the Carolina Hurricanes' Sebastian Aho, which the latter accepted.  This gives the 'Canes seven days to decide to match the offer, or accept the pre-determined compensation package of a first, second and third-round pick in next year's draft.

This is a five-year contract which carries a $8.4M AAV and is structured this way:




The TSN panel boys were perplexed that the offer wasn’t for more money, as Hurricanes GM Don Waddell stated himself, even with the understanding that a higher offer would have meant a greater compensation owed Carolina.

The Montréal press hounds asked Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin about this (4:05 mark), why not push the AAV up to $9M or $10M, to really make the Hurricanes sweat, but he matter-of-factly explained that the salary and structure was acceptable to the player, to the team, as was the compensation he’d have to fork over. He didn’t believe that making the yearly salary higher would rebuff the ‘Canes from matching, so they obviously think the bonus structure is the poison pill.




So basically this is a deal that the Canadiens and the player can live with, and it illustrates the point that TSN’s Bob McKenzie made a few years ago: there is no gentleman’s agreement between GMs preventing offer sheets, just the practical consideration that, as one GM explained to him, for an offer sheet to work, you have to make it so outlandish that it wrecks the other team’s salary structure if they choose to match it. You have to vastly overpay a player so the opposing GM tosses in his cards and pushes away from the table. The GM continued that, if you manage that, great, you ‘win’ the player, but now you have on your hands a contract that will wreck your own team’s salary structure.

It looks like Marc Bergevin tried to straddle that line, offer a generous contract and structure that only locks up the player for five years, when he can re-up at an even higher number, while at the same time not have the player cause jealousy and resentment in the Canadiens locker room if it comes to that. He tried to offer an onerous to the cash-poor ‘Canes but overall reasonable contract that when he has to negotiate with his other players, they can’t point to that deal and say “I’d like something crazy like that”.

And he made it too easy probably for the Hurricanes to match it, but now every player on that team will point at Aho and say “I want my money in bonuses up front”, and Don Waddell can no longer hide behind a ‘team policy’ reason not to grant that. So yeah, all that may come of this is ruffled feathers.

What happens if he does land in Montréal, if the Hurricanes refuse to match, which I would stake at a 25% chance?  Well, he immediately becomes the #1 centre on the team.  Max Domi can shift over to the wing.  Jesperi Kotkaniemi is the second-line centre, Phillip Danault is a more reasonably slotted deluxe third-line centre.  There is less haste in bringing up the kids Ryan Poehling and Nick Suzuki, to put them on the roster and hope they succeed, rather than letting them mature in Laval in due time.

It probably frees up a winger and/or centre prospect who can then be flipped for a left-shot defenceman who can play in the Top 4, since evidently Jake Gardiner is a no-go, for reasons.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.  Let's see where this leads within the next week.  And props to Marc Bergevin for a shrewd move, an attempt at improving the club with little downside, whichever eventuality befalls us.
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