Adrian Dater
First off, breathe deep and try to relax. I still think it’s a small chance that Gabe Landeskog, the captain of the Colorado Avalanche, will NOT be back. But that DOES mean that, yes, there is a chance he won’t be back. At least, that’s the indication I’ve gotten in my best attempts at getting the latest information on what’s going on with contract talks between him and the Avs.
Without naming names of sources, this is information I have: Yes, Landeskog and the Avs have held talks toward a new contract and the “process” is expected to continue. But – and maybe I’m reading too much into what I’ve been told, which is always possible because, hey, they’re not giving me carte blanche on all the details and likely never will lol – this doesn’t appear to be the slam dunk that we might all have thought originally. As you might guess, the economics of all this is the potential problem. It almost always is, right?
I’ve said all along that I don’t think we’ll see ANY major signings by the Avs until they know who is departing the roster to become a member of the Seattle Kraken. That will happen on July 21, when the expansion draft happens. The Avs might lose a player like Logan O’Connor who would carry a minimal cap hit, of $725,000. Or, they might lose a Joonas Donskoi ($3.9 million cap hit), J.T. Compher ($3.5 million), Ryan Graves ($3.16 million) or, maybe, even an Erik Johnson ($6 million).
If the Avs lose any one of those last four guys I just mentioned, suddenly there is at least $3.16 million back in the kitty to use elsewhere like, say, on a new deal for a Landeskog or a Cale Makar or a Philipp Grubauer or a Brandon Saad. Makar, we know, isn’t going anywhere. The only question is: how big will his next salary be, and what kind of term will he take/get?
Landeskog, Grubauer and Saad are all potential UFAs two weeks from tomorrow. That potential extra minimum $3.16 million could make the difference in signing one or all three of those potential UFAs. I mean, there are a lot of potential scenarios, but if we’re talking about Landeskog, Makar and Grubauer all getting comparable market value for their services, the Avs just may not have all the money necessary. Saad is, in my mind anyway, unlikely to come back. My information is that there has been little, in any, contact between the Avs and his agent toward a new deal. Yeah, that might change, especially if, say, Seattle somehow takes EJ at his $6 million hit in the expansion draft (they have to hit the salary cap floor of $60.24 million, don’t forget. They have to take on SOME big contracts). Suddenly, the Avs would have $6 million to play around with for their own potential UFAs, making a potential Saad re-signing much easier.
What is Landeskog worth on the open market? Well, I definitely think some team out there would give him at least $8 million per. Why not, for a guy who is still just 28 years old and has scored 20 or more goals in eight of his first 10 NHL seasons, not to mention a very good defensive player and strong locker-room presence?
If you’re Landeskog’s agent, whose name is Peter Wallen, why wouldn’t you demand $8 million per? Especially, when the Avs have already given a deal to Mikko Rantanen at $9.25 million per, when he was still three years away from being UFA.
Let me pretend to be Wallen here for a minute: “Look, I know Mikko is younger and put up more points, and I get it that you had to pay some premium for his deal to extend into his UFA years, but my client has delivered mostly full value for you guys for 10 years now, at salaries all under $6 million per. He’s a power forward who scores 20 or more goals most every year, including this past one, and he plays a two-way game. If you don’t pay the going rate, someone else sure as hell will. Oh, by the way, he’s your team’s captain.”
But let me play Joe Sakic here in a scenario I wouldn’t say is unthinkable: “Look, we want Gabe back, of course we do. But we just think a six-year, $48 million extension is a little steep for us. He’s gonna be 29 in November, he’s slowing down just a little I think we’d all agree and we just can’t give him the moon when we’ve got to sign Makar and Grubauer and a couple other guys (Tyson Jost, Conor Timmins) too. He’s gonna have to take a hometown discount. Maybe not a big one, but a little one.”
It’s always about the money in the end, right? I mean, let’s be real. I remember being on the phone once with Don Meehan, the longtime agent who was representing goalie Jose Theodore at the time. Theodore wound up signing a deal with the Washington Capitals that was $1 million more per year than what the Avs offered him when talks broke off.
Theodore had made a lot of money in his career by then, and I somewhat naively asked “well, why would he want to leave this great situation for that situation in Washington” or something like that. And I’ll never forget what Meehan said:
“Because it was $1 million more per year, that’s why.”
And so, yeah, I get it. I think it’s easy for us civilians to think, ‘Aw, what difference does a million or two make to those guys anymore”, but a million dollars is a million dollars. Their working careers are still relatively short. You get as much as you can and as much as you deserve when you’re a pro athlete.
Again, I just can’t see the Avs letting Landeskog walk for nothing. It’s not like he’s 34 years old and the jig is almost up (a la in Minnesota, where they just announced they’re buying out the final four years each of the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter). Landeskog would shoot to the top of the UFA market as the biggest fish. He’d get a big offer from someone, including the St. Louis Blues, who haven’t been shy, apparently, in their coveting of him.
It would be a PR disaster for the Avs, unless they followed up his loss with some kind of huge move of their own (Jack Eichel to the Avs maybe?). Landeskog is a proven commodity. Power forwards who score 20 goals every year don’t grow on trees.
But maybe the Avs are saying, “Landeskog could become another Parise in a couple years – a big contract we wish we hadn’t given. What, exactly, have we won with him by the way? Wasn’t it his disastrous turnover/bad pass to Ryan Graves that helped cost Game 5 against Vegas? Weren’t we playing Andre Burakovsky on the top line in the end, not Landy?”
I think the Avs would be foolish to think that last thought, and I highly doubt they are thinking it. But does anything shock us in pro sports anymore? It shouldn’t, if it still does.
Again, I somehow think this will have a happy ending, that Landeskog will be back. But is it a lock?
Doesn’t seem like it.