What a great couple of days this is going to be for some EURO players. And what stressful times for some general managers.
Belfast GM Chris Patton owns the rights to the three top Type 2 free agents and what he decides to do with them will have a lot to say with how close the Giants will get to Cup No. 5. Naturally, Patton would love to keep Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon and Matt Duchene in the lineup; the question is can he afford them long-term? He will have to spend about $4 million more – probably more – to get those three stars to sign extensions. And then there’s defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. He’s also looking for a raise.
Belfast isn’t the only team that is struggling with higher salary requests. Berlin has 12 Type 2 players to deal with, Moscow has 11, and Bratislava has 10, while Madrid, Minsk and London have 8 or more.
Realistically, some of those teams that have been carefully cultivating young players might have to let some of them go, thanks to the salary cap and increasing player demands.
Olli Maatta of Stockholm and Filip Forsberg of Munich have been bargain players for a long time. No more. Maatta will ask for at least $4 million more than the $1.39 he earned last year, and Forsberg will seek a raise in the $3.5 million or higher neighborhood. Geneva’s Colton Parayko ($1.07 million last year) and Helsinki’s Nerius Alisauskas ($1.09 million) are among several other players who will be demanding millions more to stay with their current teams.
Should general managers plant their feet, take a stand against rising prices, and refuse to budge, these free agents could become true free agents after the “free agent frenzy” step. Depending on the player, they could end up with mega raises or embarrassingly low contracts. Let’s take goalie Andrey Vasilevskiy of Prague for example. He made $1.15 million last season and he would probably use his 85 PO rating to ask for $4.5 million or more from Peter Ott. If Vasilevskiy escapes to free agency, he would hope at least one general manager is anticipating a bidding war and offers him $6 million. But if goalies aren’t a hot commodity, Vasilevskiy could be playing for about half that, or not at all.
This step will wind up Wednesday at about noon ET.
