The Hockey PDOcast - Elias Pettersson’s Season, and The Future of Deals for Star Players

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to break down the season Elias Pettersson is having, all of the considerations for his next contract, and how the framing of deals for star players could change moving forward. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitra Filippovich, and joining me as my good buddy Thomas Trans. Tom, what's going on, man? Let's get to have you back in town. Yeah, no, it's nice to be back. It was a fun road trip through New York. New York road trip as a beat writer covering the West Coast team is the Crem to La Crem.

Because you get three games, six days, don't have to fly. Unreal. But then my travel day got super difficult because, yeah, storms in the... the Northeast were complicated. But yeah, a lot of a lot of fun. Great to be back in Vancouver with the bad weather chasing me, apparently. Yeah, you're a vet at this point. I hope our palat Harmon Dial isn't listening because you very strategically pick your dates in terms of where you're trying to go and who you're trying to see. So you're back. So, okay, so you were on this grueling road trip, right? It was a seven gamer for Vancouver Canucks. You caught the meat of it,

the five in between. And it was, by all accounts, a smash, except. for them, right? They bank 11 out of 14 possible points. But those five games you saw in particular were the five outright Ws they got. And in that, I would posit that those three games in the New York area in particular were maybe the three most impressive team performances they've had this season. They certainly had a few games particularly early in the year at home where they kind of ran up the score on opponents, I think, of the Blues game, for example. There's been a few others. The game in Nashville, some of the games against the Oilers. But yeah, yeah, I mean, those three for me were the first time personally,

I looked at this team and thought, I can see it. I could see this team playing deep into the spring. Well, the game against the Devils, they out shoot them 425, the game against the Islanders, 3420, and the one in MSG against the Rangers, for a while there, they sort of went like full sicko globetrotters on them, right, with the back-to-back goals by Pedersen and Hoglander.

Yeah. And that's what I sort of mean by stacking together performances. It went beyond the scoreboard, although that was obviously impressive itself. but just in terms of the actual under them. It did represent, I think, the upward trajectory that the optimists in us hope to see as the season went along. Yeah, the, you know, you go back now and look at, for example, their performance on this road trip, and some of the underlying stuff in terms of what they're doing, especially adjusted for score is now, you know, 57%.

Like the sort of thing where if that's maintained, if that's not just a blip, you know, you could see this team having the true talent level of like a hundred and five. point team, which is a level that I haven't sort of been at. I rate this club, not just based off of my priors, but based off of what we've seen, like the way they were winning games earlier in the year

where, you know, you had like a six week stretch where their goaltending was completely nuclear and their power play was putting in a goal or two a night. And then you had this stretch where they kind of limped along at 500 for about, you know, 15 games. And really,

it was their defense that was carrying them, and you could sort of start to see the seams where, oh, can this club get enough offense five on five, especially if they're not regularly controlling play with their top six on the ice. And then you had this stretch where the third line carried them offensively. And now, you know, you're seeing not a team where it's like you've got some auxiliary engines running and they're strong enough, like you have enough outs that you're sort of able to win despite okay five-on-five form. now you're seeing, oh, this might be a real engine. Like this team might have a real, you know, centerfuge that's going at a high clip. And if that's the case, if that's maintained, if this sort of trend we've seen from the

Canucks over the last 10, it is sustained the next 10 and then the next 10. You know, I think you're looking at a team that, you know, if they're not a fringe contender, they might be an outright one. Well, and part of why I wanted to have you in to talk about this today, and we had sort of coordinated this and then you wrote an accompanying. and call them at the athletic about it. It's become, I'm not sure how to rate it because on the one hand, being here in this market, I feel like we're sort of privy to the conversation on a day-to-day basis, and you obviously cover the team.

And so it's not something that is sneaking up on you because I think people here, whether it's covering the team or whether it's fans of the team or people working for the team are obviously a lot of what happens this season. There's this backdrop of Elias Pedersen's upcoming RFA status this summer. He's got the one year left. And then it's sort of this crossroads of what's going to happen long term. with him with their best player. But nationally, it understandably has sort of taken a backseat, right?

Yeah. But now I think as the season goes along, it's going to be something that you're going to see more sort of stories or quotes coming out, especially as the Canucks visit certain towns and the reporters are out about it, right? Like it feels like that's going to gain some traction. Sure. And so. Although, man, he is as sick as he is at stick handling in space, he is so good.

Even better at evading the questions. He's been so good at evading this. Like in New York, the Swedish. media like there's a lot of Swedish media there um and they were asking him about it in a language I couldn't understand and they told me that you know afterwards he was like well you'll know about it when it's done like he was like very much stunting on the fact that he was giving nothing away and and that's part of this why it hasn't been a big national a big story of national interest is there's been no fuel this is a vacuum story there there's not a ton of intel to really fill the

gap with. And so I think you get the occasional, you know, plugged in podcast rumor. You get the occasional bit of speculation. What we have seen now, I think, are the stakes alter, right? Because this team is now looking far more legit than anyone thought they might five, six months ago. I also think you've seen management begin to wear some more of their impatience on their sleeve. And in fact, in some ways, it seems like, try to turn up the heat. to stimulate discussions in the public sphere. Despite that, day to day in this market, it's a talking point. It's a matter of anxiety for Kinext fans, but it categorically is not a distraction.

It's categorically not something that Pedersen is being asked about with any regularity. And it's not something, obviously, that's getting in the way of his individual or this team's team level performance. And I think that's permitted it to remain in the backseat to some extent. Well, so this road trip coincided with them reuniting the lot of line, right? Bumping Pedersen to the wing. I know you took some issue with framing it or labeling it as a lot of line because it wasn't its natural configuration. I don't want to belabor the point. But just remember, like, for me, I'm an attendance taker at like practice in games.

Right. So if you have a nickname for a line, but it actually needs to be clarified with an additional detail. Right, because that's not the way they're slotting in. For me, that's not useful. Right. So that's partly why my bias shows. Like, I just have a different need for a line shorthand than your average hockey fan. Well, regardless of the semantics.

Yeah. It coincided with him going absolutely nuclear, right? In particular, that, yeah, that four-point game cap with an overtime winner in Pittsburgh. A silly goal against both the Rangers and the Islanders. Really showed off and flex all of the skill and everything that we've come to expect from him, right? And I think it would have, I think it was sort of naturally going to happen regardless this because after a really hot start to the year where pretty much everyone at the top of this team's depth chart was just piling up and stacking up ridiculous point totals, right?

There was a relatively pedestrian by his lofty standards, 15 to 20 game stretch there, right? Where the points kind of cooled off a little bit, the performance took a step back. Now, he ripped off this tear and all of a sudden he's right back near the top of this leaderboard in 515 points, goals, assists, raw points. He's on pace for a second consecutive hundred point season as a 25-year-old center. he's taking even a step further, right? Because I think last year he had, what, 39 goals on like 103 points or something. And now he's at 42 and 108 point pace, right?

So silly stuff. The reason why I'm framing it this way, though, is because I've always thought of them in these past however many years, just watching him closer. I've always thought of him as a guy who relishes a bigger stage and, like, the spotlight. Not in like a selfish, egotistical way, but someone who wants that opportunity, right, to play meaningful, important. games where everyone's watching and everyone's talking about it. And that's kind of what's made the way this organization sort of fumbled the bag around him for a couple years now and his

own wrist injuries along the way certainly derailed him a little bit. But that's what made it so tragic, right? Where it's like we saw a glimpse of that in the bubble for those 15 or so playoff games. And it was a sight to behold. And in particular, there were a few games there. I remember it was like game one against Vegas where they kind of got dunked on a little bit and Vegas was sort of taking some liberties with the trash talk and with trying to be physical with him and then he just came back in game two and just absolutely just lit them on fire. And they wound up losing that series. But like that's always what I had in the back of my mind with this guy in terms of like big game

player will thrive on this stage. And then so he goes outies for this road trip through New York. And I don't think it was an accident that he just not only produced the way he did, but like the flare of some of the goals he scored as well. The show. Yeah. He put on a show. He did.

He really did. And I don't think that was an accident certainly. So seeing that from him now And then I think with the team performing the way it has Where there are only percentage points behind the Winnipeg Jets now For first in the West You like how I framed this percentage points As opposed to raw points

Well and I thought you were going to say the league And I was like, I think Boston creeped north No, no no, for the West I'm focusing on And we'll talk more about the Western hierarchy there in a second But it's so well timed on all fronts And I think you mentioned how there hasn't been a lot of fuel in the fire I imagine part of that is because he's made it very publicly known

all he wants is to compete in playing important games, right? And a lot of players say that. I actually truly believe him when he says it, right? I'm sure he wants to have individual accolades and also make a lot of money and that stuff will come, but he wants to play important games on a contending team.

And so I think if this season had gone the way the previous couple had gone, maybe there would be a bit more fuel to fire because it would just be tougher to sort of envision a realistic scenario in this timeline where he would get to do that in Vancouver. But now through these first 40 or so games, it's looking increasingly likely that, regardless of your mileage on where they stack up against other teams, at least they'll have a chance to play on that stage. And so I think that's a big reason why this subplot has taken that sort of backseat, but it's still sort of coming to the forefront now as these games go along and we don't get any sort of resolution yet.

Yeah, I also think the bridge deal last time, the way that that played out, the distraction when he finally did sign, having missed training camp, and then struggling, coming back from the wrist injury, but also I think with the pressure from the contract, I mean, you know, I don't know exactly what's going on between his ears, obviously. Like, he's really reluctant to discuss these topics. He doesn't want to be asked about it. He really does want to focus. But, you know, I could understand why the hockey, especially right now, that he's surely having as much fun as he's ever had in his career, winning games like this, and playing, like, aesthetically gorgeous hockey with a winning team at the moment. You know, you can understand if that was where he just wanted his attention focused. And the last thing is, you know, there's a lot of players who might take a negotiating stance. Like, I don't want to negotiate in season, and it would mean not a lot.

But I do think with this guy when he says something, you know, you kind of have to expect that he may be inflexible within that particular point of view, even as, you know, become pretty apparent that the club's frustration, or maybe frustration's too harsh, but impatience to get this moving, to get some clarity to have certainty on a linchpin of their success to this point in the air, you know, they definitely want to get things going in terms of having that sewn up well ahead of. the expiry of his contract on July 1. Well, I think his career arc to date, and, you know, there's still so much runaway here and sort of story to be told in his career. But the first, however many seasons in that I just think it's so fascinating, right? And you've gotten a front row seat to it, but he arrives on the scene and this organization is sort of like lost at sea, right? The city is they just retired. They're looking for the next face of the franchise, the next person who's going to be a superstar. He arrived in Vancouver like a lightning ball.

Right. And then the late grade, Jason Botchford labels him the alien, right? We watch him finally play and he delivers on all that hype. And it actually really does sort of, it seems almost sacrilegious to compare anyone to Powell Datsuk, but you watch him play with like the kind of crafty, herky jerky motions and how slick he is with the puck and the way he's able to like laser the puck's in top corner while also lifting your stick. Of course, right?

It's incredible. It's so uncanny. Now, he has that wrist injury, right? And I think you could see it based on all the rate stats in terms of like his willingness to shoot certainly came down. His efficiency doing so came down. And even when he came back, he missed a good chunk of that one season, which was a year for hell from him. Even when he came back, I think it took him a while to sort of, I think probably regain confidence in the fact that he wouldn't get re-injured every time he tried a wrist shot, right? And it was really sad watching him during that time because I'd come to like appreciate just the violent nature when he uncorked that shots.

sometimes and he seemed just so hesitant to do so. And that coming back in his bag has been a big reason why we've seen this offensive explosion since last year, really, right? But I just kind of wanted to sort of work our way through that and document it's sort of the profile, right? Because I'm trying to establish the benchmarks here, I guess, for what the next contract's going to look like and what expectations of this player should be. I think generally people are pretty familiar with this game, certainly.

But it's also such a unique statistical profile because the reason why I highlighted that shot is, and I'm not sure for your mileage on this, but he's already shown an ability to me. I'm always skeptical of saying a player can influence on ice shooting percentage for the most part because it's been such a rare quality that we sometimes miss a sign after a short period of time. But for the most part, you look and really throughout his NHL career, he's been able to do just that. Especially if you're willing to throw out the first 50 games of that 2020, I guess it was 2021, 2022 campaign where Boudreau takes over halfway through. You know, and at the moment Boudreau takes over his like on ice shooting percentage is

4.5% right. If you throw out that sample, you know, he's been one of the NHL's best shooting percentage drivers, whether you want to attribute it to him or not, you should. But, you know, both in terms of his individual conversion rate and his linemates when he's on the ice, which makes sense because he's not just a shooter. I mean, he's a lethal shooter. but he also sets up absolute backdoor tap-ins for guys. And, you know, you see it in the success of his linemates, right? You see it in, you know, I think the number one guy in terms of shooting percentage in the league over the last year and a half, like the last two seasons, has been Ilya McKayette, right? I mean, seconds, Patterson, third's, André Kuzmanko.

I mean, there is an ability to, I always used to think about it like this, Dim. I used to think about it like, there are guys who can set the table. and there are guys who can eat, you know? Taves and Cain were always like sort of the perfect facsimile because they didn't often play together, but, you know, Taves was a guy that Shackox could send out and he'd dominate the shot counter, and then Cain could come out and sort of do the eating, right?

He could put it away with the best of them. And, you know, what's rare is the guy who can do both. What's rare is your Crosby type? What's rare is, you know, not that Pedersen's Sidney Crosby, but that's the profile you're talking about. This is a guy who, you know, both influences where the game is played and then does way more damage than you'd expect him to do on a shot by shot basis and helps his linemates do the same. You know, he's he's incredibly unique. And honestly, even zooming out without getting too nitty gritty into the analytics of it, it's like, no, that's what we do here.

I know, don't worry about doing that. Well, I know, but even zooming out just a little bit, right? This guy is 25 years old working on his second consecutive hundred point season. 25 or under 100 points center. There's no one else, right? The only other guy is Jack Hughes, who's never actually hit 100 points, but he had 99 and 78 games last year,

45 and 32 this year. Yeah, I'll give it to him too. But that's it. Like, that's the company we're talking about. Right. 100 point under 25-year-old center. There's two guys in the league. And, you know, that also sort of amplifies how interesting this is, right?

the devil's locked up Jack Hughes early. That was wise. The Canucks bridged Pedersen in the wake of the pandemic. And, you know, now I think we're going to, and we'll get into this as we go through the show. But now I do think we're going to get into nearly uncharted waters in terms of what his leverage looks like and what his valuation could be on this next deal. Well, just to demonstrate that because I do have, we are going to get into the nitty, gritty, gritty analytics. I've got the numbers down here. so he's never dropped below 15% as a finisher himself.

And his career average now is 17% on nearly 1,300 shots. Stamcoast territory. 5 on 5 on ice shooting percentage. 12% in 1920, almost 14% in 2021. 7.6 and 21, 22, which you mentioned, which was coming back from injury and then the coach and change, right? Last year, 12.1% this year, 15.5. Now obviously, we don't need to rehash.

why 15.5 this year is very high. But it does sort of demonstrate, like, when you look at that compared to even wildly skilled players who have a lot of individual success, even McDavid. Like, if you think about when they hired Woodcroft, right, I remember his on-ice shooting percentage at the time was in the tank. And it was like, he's playing really well. He's still producing his points. But the puck's just not really going in at the rate we've come to expect for everyone

around him, even though he does all of that table setting and eating himself. Right. And so just the ability to sort of be almost immune to that when actually at full health does make him an alien or a unicorn in a way. Yeah, a completely singular difference maker. It's wild. And, you know, I do think this team's found some players that can amplify that a bit, right? That also can put it away. And then you've got one of the best table setting skaters on the planet in Quinn Hughes.

And that's sort of partly what loading up the Canucks top line. enabled, right? For so much of this year, even though Pedersen's been crushing it, like his two most common linemates until last week were Elya McAev and Sam Lafferty. Yeah. Right? And And Andre Kuzbenko, who's struggled immensely. You know, the, a lot of self-matching with Quinn Hughes and J.T. Miller is sort of a five-man unit against Tufts, leaving Pedersen to face secondary matchups without a ton of help. And, you know, you load up that top

blind and then you roll them out as a as a as a huge erroneic miller peterson besser five group of five you know against everybody like don't even worry about who's on the ice against them and you know Vancouver's five guys are going to be better than your five guys most nights and it showed you know I think that was sort of the underrated part of why that deployment change unlocked something was it just massively upgraded the quality of teammate that peterson was spending his ice timer. It did, and I think that's an important part of contextualizing his production and his performance this year. I've got it down for, he's played about 240 minutes with Quinn Hughes at 5-1-5 this season, and that's after sort of juicing that total more recently, right?

Because for a while there, it was a very low percentage. In that time, they're scoring nearly six goals per hour as a team with those two guys on the ice at 5-on-5, which is just unheard of, right? If you get into the four range, and obviously over a larger sample, like you talk like, that star's top line that has been just running rough shot over the league at 5-1-5 in the past couple years. They're around four and we're all marveling at how good that is. And now we're talking like 5.7, 5.8 for these guys. That's really impressive.

And the eye test certainly matches as well, right? Oh, yeah, it's fun to watch. And you watch broadcast at intermissions talking about it. And it's like, yeah, they're just moving the puck around. You watch them swinging it. Even on sequences don't result in a goal, it almost looks like it's a powerplay. And with the team's powerplay regressing a little bit, at times it almost looks more lethal are on the man advantage. It does. Yeah. It does. There's a menace to their game that is just a ton of fun to watch on a game in, game out basis. Yeah. It's wild. All right. Do you want to, any other notes on Pedersen's season in particular this year that you wanted to highlight in watching them? Because we kind of run through the production, the stats, the context of how it's come. Because I want to talk about all his contract, how that ties into the team structure. And then I think even taking a step back and sort of,

of viewing it through the lens of the league, right? Because we saw that Willie Neelander contract recently and not to bring everything back to the Leafs, but I think it does open the door for an interesting conversation in terms of what the future holds in terms of like salary structures for stars, what the specifics of these contracts are going to look like as we head towards this new era of the NHL resembling the NBA a little bit more, right, in terms of player empowerment, in terms of the salary cap going up in terms of salary structure is changing. Yeah, and I think we are, yeah, let's, let's park it because I've got a bunch of takes.

And I do think this is wide ranging. This isn't just about the Canucks. It's not just about the Leafs and William Nealander. Like, I think we can fold in Miko Ranton into this discussion. I think we can fold in Leon Dreisital into this discussion. I think there's a really strong class of star players who are expiring, you know, not even this summer, but the summer beyond that, who could be impacted by where Pedersons next. deal comes in potentially in material ways.

But yeah, I do think we're about to see this salary structure that we've grown far too comfortable with effectively get detonated over the course of the next 18 months. And it's some of the league's best players who are going to do it. Okay, look forward to that then. Let's take our break here. When we come back, we'll pick right back up with you. You're listening to the Hockey-Pedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right, we are back here on the HockeyPedioCast joined by Thomas Drens.

Tom. we started out the show talking about Alas Pedersen in particular. And I wanted to use that as a vehicle to just talking about the league at large with regards to contracts with star players. I'll give you the floor here. You're the guest.

And I know you wrote about this, but you also think about this quite a bit as much as I do, and we talk about it off the record, or not off the record, but off mic. Although we could just start recording it. We should bite-sized audio notes that we post. Take it any direction you want here. what do you think is sort of the most interesting component of this?

Yeah, I mean, the most interesting component to me is for all the hand-wringing in the Vancouver market, and I don't know exactly what precipitated it, but the anxiety around Pedersen's situation, and this isn't media-driven, this is like from fans in the 650 inbox, this is from people in my Twitter mentions, this is from commenters at the athletic. For some reason, the anxiety around Pedersen's contract status turned up to like seven out of 10, where it's sort of been simmering for much of the season this week. And, you know, in thinking about and unpacking it, which I did at length at an athletic column,

it's called How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Elias Pedersen rumors, and you can go check that out. As I unpacked this and really sort of thought about it, it became clearer and clearer to me looking big picture that in some ways Pedersen's interests are best served by waiting. Even as the club's best interests, obviously, are best served by having cost certainty with one of their most important players, you know, and a real, like, lynchpin to their, to their so far extremely successful short-term retooling project.

By waiting to this point, Pedersen has enhanced the level of information he has about, like, this team, the new coach, their ability to put a competitive team around him, the environment. Certainly you can imagine that if he had concerns about his ability to win in Vancouver, he's got to be feeling a lot more confident about that prospect going forward today than he would have four or five months ago. Then you add, and this is where I think it gets really interesting, the prospect of the cap going up to a projected 87.5 million and 90 plus the following summer. And I mean, all that's happened over the course of this year is that he's repeated his sterling form from a year ago and in fact built on it

and built up even more leverage in these contract talks by sort of waiting. To me, that all seems like, you know, there's no need to speculate about disaster scenarios or what a guy wants. It's like, that just makes business sense. Yeah. Right?

Like, fundamentally, his interests have been served as rational self-interest by waiting. Just as the team's rational self-interest would be best served if they had this deal locked up. And it's sort of, we've kind of reached a point here now. And the Nylander contract, I think, is an interesting footnote to this because that's a floor for Pedersen.

Yeah. That's a floor. Neelander's now the second highest paid winger in hockey and that's a floor. Like, he's more productive. He plays a premium position. He's younger. There's no world where 115 on a long-term deal, you know, is a penny less than what Pederson, you know, demands as like within the middle range of his next deal.

But what could it look like? What could it look like in the event that whether it's through the arbitration route or through accepting your qualifying offer? If Pedersen decided that, in fact, what he's curious to do is, and this is, I'm just presenting this as an intellectual exercise, but to approach the open market as a 26-year-old unrestricted free agent, potentially with two or three hundred point seasons at his back. I mean, what does that even look like? Right.

I think there's no contract in hockey that he couldn't demand more than in a world where it played out in that manner. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. But the reason why I've sort of brought in the Willie contract is because I remember at the time it happened, And I think the details that we're still coming out while I was recording that day. So I was like thinking about it on the fly. But the thing I kept coming back to was I think as fans of the sport and people who cover it, we generally need to, I think, like, reframe or rewire the way we think about these contracts for star players, right?

Because oftentimes, and I think more from the fan perspective where we've become so accustomed to expecting players to take. Our player gets 12 and a half. Yes. Well, that's on like the absolute high end, right? Like, players leaving money in the table to help their teams win. And the cap is going up now. Well, that means our team's going to be able to improve because all of a sudden we have more money now to add other players. When in reality, that's going to be the case for some teams, especially that already have been proactive and got the timing down and took calculated bets like New Jersey did with a lot of their players.

but for teams that didn't do that for a variety of reasons, I think this increase in cap space, it's going to be interesting to see how much of that is just sort of accounted for by stars taking a larger piece of the pie themselves, right? Instead of being like, all right, well, the cap just went up $4 million. That means we can add a $4 million player, it actually being, well, our star player who's up for a new deal is actually just going to take a significant part of that

and we're going to have the same team. Just that player is going to make more. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing because every one of these guys are so intrinsic to the overall health of an organization. Like you think about Alex Patterson, not only is he their most impactful forward. He makes everyone around him better. He sells jerseys. He gets people to come to the rink. He drives conversation of people like you and I who are on local radio here doing podcasts, talking about the team in a positive light, right?

Like all of this stuff factors into it if you're thinking about it as an organization. And so every one of these guys is actually worth significantly more than we've become accustomed to. And as the money goes up and the seat of the table sort of becomes more valuable, I'm curious to see how that dynamic shifts. Well, and we've lost in some ways, I think, a sense of proportion, in part because there's been five years or six years of stagnant cap growth, but also because, you know, the fact is, is that relatively speaking, the best players used to take up a larger, right? the, you know, Zadano Chara 7 and a half back when the cap was 44 million when he signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Boston Bruins.

I mean, that's a $14 million contract, proportionally speaking, today. You know, and then you get things like people doing the, well, no one's won a cup with a guy who makes $11 million, right? And it's like, yeah, but they kind of have. They kind of have, proportionally speaking. It's silly.

And it really hurts the people who are driving our interest, who are driving our interest and driving the bottom line in this business. It doesn't make sense, and it should change. It should change, and we're reaching a moment where I think it will. Like, I really do, you know, again, for me,

it's almost not this free agent class, which I think is relatively pedestrian. But that expiring in 2026 group where you've got Crosby, who would be like middle range, which is ridiculous to say. Pedersen, if this plays out a certain way, but Rantanin, dry-sidal,

I mean, that to me, in a world where the caps at 91 million, like, you know, those are the deals that I really think, those are the players who I really think could, like, beat McDavid's cap number, beat, you know, McKinnon's cap number, beat the Matthews cap number.

Like, those are the deals where I could see you getting into like 15 or 16, type million type valuations for these players, which by the way would still be value, right? Would still be like efficient contracts even in today's system. And they should, right? Like it's strange how you can almost become like villainized in a way

because it's like, oh, like, you took too much, too big of a share when in reality the way you should look at it, I think, is it just becomes, like I think you can win with players taking that percentage. of the cap, it just becomes so much more incumbent on the team than to not have unnecessary missteps on like overpaying guys who aren't worth that money, right? Correct.

For whatever reason, let's say Willie Nealander, for example, because that was the most recent one, let's say you think of him as a $10 million dollar player, but he got 11.5, right? And I think he's 11.5 fair value. No problem, yeah. But let's say it's like, all right, that's a million and a half too much. You're willing to draw that line, but then when a replacement level player gets like two and a half million the way someone like a David Camp did for example in my opinion on that same team obviously there were a contingent of the fan base that was upset with that at the time as well but for the most

part it's easier I guess to swallow that and it's like all right well we're not going to team because of this two and a half million when in reality it's like it's the same thing honestly this is a sort of a return like we used to live in a world where deals became out of date you know because the and then there'd be new comparables like I have this recollection of doing I think it was in like Montreal and after Blake Wheeler who'd had two seasons at like you know point eight five points per game like he'd just become a star as as once the thrashers relocated to Winnipeg and he'd signed for five years at five point six million and people were losing their minds right and like people were like that is a wild valuation for you know

this this guy was cooking he was clearly the best player on that the team at that point and probably the best playmaking winger in hockey at that point. And it blew my mind that people couldn't adjust to the fact that, well, as the cap goes up, these guys are going to get more. And in fact, this is great value for a guy who's already shown you. He's a first line talent who's productive as anything offensively for two years, like 130 game sample. I mean, what should he be making? Like, this is a first liner, man.

So, you know, I think we're going to get back to that world and we're going to see some contracts that I think people have sticker shock on and then within a year, they're going to be good value, like right away. Now, in terms of that, though. I think Neelander's a good example, actually. I think Neelander is going to be, we're going to look back at that deal in two years and be like, oh, that's totally fine value. That's the opinion on it. And not even for the first time in his career.

No. No, and listen, there's always going to be sort of cautionary tales or I guess calculated bets that didn't wind up working out where you bet on a player long term before. and then they don't wind up developing for whatever reason. And it's like, oh, man, we missed on that one. A classic Pierre Dorian. Yeah, exactly. Look at you where I can find a way to work in a Pierre Dorian reference,

even though he's not longer in our lives. Just love to dig in the sense. But for the most part, I think you and I still agree that pretty much every single time taking that long-term, big swing on a second deal is the way to go. And I'm kind of curious, right, because this whole concept of player empowerment is players who have the leverage getting what, they feel like they rightfully deserve, and to do so, they need to get to unrestricted free agency as soon as they can while their earning powers at highest.

Or at least close. We're a year away and then the pre-agency concept, all that, right? Or maybe even two years away, you can start all moving stuff in place. That goes completely against what the team would then want to accomplish, which is, all right, after three years of your ELC, sign an eight-year deal here on the dotted line. We'll give you more than you probably are based on what you've done so far, but two years from now, it'll be a steal for us. We're going to be laughing.

Yeah. And so I'm kind of curious for your take on how the machinations of that are going to develop here with this sort of cat and mouse game between team and player. Yeah, I mean, look, the idea of the bridge, you know, unless, I mean, I like one good bridge contract in the last 10 years and it's Braden Point, right? because the Tampa Bay Lightning won two cups and made a third cup final over the course of his three-year bridge. But, you know, I just, I think it's so instructive to go back to that forward class because we talked at length about that forward class and what was the deal that was most criticized in that class of forwards. It was Mitch Marner. Mitch Marner's deal, people are still mad about it.

But if you go and think about everyone else who was in that forward class other than Pointe Marner, Lione traded, Besser, you know, dealt with years of speculation about being traded. He's like the most traded player who's never been dealt. Right. You know, you sort of go down the list. I guess the Kyle Conner deal worked out well, but that was a long-term one. That was a six-year, a six-year deal. You know, Kachuk is in that class. Well, how'd that work out for the team, right?

The bridge contracts signed in that time frame, you know, for me anyway, should be all you need. Like, just look at the trajectory of those players since and tell me that you wouldn't rather have been Toronto. You'd rather be Toronto every time out. You know, I do think some teams have figured this out and learned from it. And, you know, it was clear what New Jersey was doing when they signed Jack Hughes the way they did.

Like, they were trying to recreate McKinnett. They knew it. Yeah. Everyone knew it. I do think it's going to be incumbent on teams being disciplined about trying to get as much term as you can on the second contracts. And that makes sense for the players too, right?

it's good business for the players too in that security is valuable in a collision sport. And, you know, if you're happy somewhere and you just want to make a lot of money and play hockey, like locking in, like the delta of locking that in long term and then not dealing with every year personal uncertainty or the risk profile that hockey players take by not having those, having that the security of a guaranteed salary long term. I mean, you know, it's not, it's not massive. I think where you get to this. and I think why it's so fascinating to me is you've got a player who's able to navigate

the pressure and he's able to navigate that pressure in this market, right, which is rare in the extreme. A singular individual, super private, knows how to, you know, keep his business out of his business effectively. And as he gets closer, right, not just too restricted for agency, maybe even beyond, you know, I do think you're talking. about a level of leverage that we've almost never seen. And honestly, I think you can hear it reflected in the commentary from, like, Jim Rutherford had an interview earlier this year with Dan Richo and Satyar Shaw on the Canucks Central show on Sportsnet 650 where he was like, we'll do whatever term makes Aaliyos most comfortable.

You know, I mean, gobsmacking stuff, the sort of stuff you very rarely hear from executives. Rutherford, by the way, is both right and just being honest, not criticizing the commentary. so much as I'm pointing out how different it is from what we usually hear, and that's because this situation is becoming increasingly unique and becoming increasingly unique in the players' favor. Are there lessons to draw from that, right? Can players, will players feel emboldened to run this out and try to hit that, you know, sort of bigger ball,

like that bigger home run as a result of seeing how the dynamic can shift if you're elite and wait. I guess the thing the hammer that teams will always have to wield on players is that hockey is such a chaotic, violent sport. And it's easy for us here to be like, all right, you should just keep betting on yourself and take as short-term deals as possible until you can make a lot of money.

And then you take one hit to the head and all of a sudden the entire perspective changes. And it's worth noting, like, you know, when he was looking for his second contract, Pedersen's preference was to get a longer deal. So, you know, Kachuk's preference was to get a longer deal, right? Like, for the most part, when we get to a point where a player's even in position or even in range for us to talk in this manner about them,

it's usually been on the team. It's usually been a team-driven decision to get to this point, at which point that balance rather promptly flips, you know, which just brings me to one of my all-time favorite sayings, which is that they call it a bridge contract because it has to lead somewhere. I have heard you say that a few times. I say it all the time.

It's my favorite. Because I hate bridge contract. I do too. It's one of my rules. It's just like, oh, I hate it. Well, because the thing is, is like, if your argument, and obviously there's specific examples,

maybe where for whatever reason you actually do want to see more, right? Whether it's like wildly varying performance from one year to another, or some sort of extenuating circumstance where it's like, all right, I genuinely don't know. Whether it's basic maturity, because you're talking about making these bets

on 21-year-old young men. I mean, you can understand why that would give anybody possible. No, certainly. But I think for the most part, if you're a team and you're saying, I prefer the bridge route because I'm unsure on how to value this player, you're sort of telling on yourself, right?

It's like you've had them, this isn't even someone who you're scouting and like trying to get Intel on, that's playing for another team. This is someone that you've had in your building for at least three years now and has been on your team and you've interacted with and watched on a day-to-day basis and you still don't know whether you want to commit eight years down the line to them. Like that would be alarming to me as a fan of a team if my team acknowledge that.

I like you using in your building, by the way. That's very Robert Mason. You know, in the facilities. Yeah, no, I know. It's good. It's just in hockey, everyone says organization, which I always think makes it sound like the mob. Whereas in football, it's in the building.

And so, yeah, very Robert Maze at you. In the building. Yeah, well, I was thinking of like the day in between games, right? The practice facility, trying to see how they interact. No, I mean, it's incredibly fascinating. I think it's going to, you know, we talk about sort of how incumbent it's going to become to make smart decisions elsewhere to account for this changing dynamic. I think if we haven't already, it's going to really shrink the available money for a certain

type of player, right? I think we're going to see teams, smart teams are doing it the right way, identify their core, pay them accordingly for as long as they possibly can, as much money as that takes. And then essentially, everything else is young players on ELCs who are playing supporting roles and you're sort of integrating into that process, veterans who are looking for one final ride or trying to compete for a cup, right? and then if you have a smart cutting edge organization who's looking at this stuff sort of like reclamation projects and guys who are for the most part right eliminate that

luxury item of like going out in free agency and spending four million dollars per year on a middle six winger right i think that's what's going to happen right like and i think we're going to see if we haven't already it's going to become very cookie cutter in that way obviously there's always going to be organizations who don't view it that way and think they know what they're doing right and then try to act differently. But for the most part, I think we're going to see everything sort of normalize and sort of shrink down and get streamlined, I guess, in that capacity. I think you already are too.

Like, every team in the league now has made the gamble that if your goal is to fit as much talent as possible under the salary cap when you get to the playoffs, right? That's kind of the goal at this point. Yeah. Then if you have to play, you know, local university or major junior goal tender as your backup for two games a year

because one guy gets hurt isn't so hurt that they have to go on IR can't go on LTI that's the price of doing business if you have to man short if you have to play 11-7 those are tradeoffs like Vegas has done this Toronto has done this you know look at Tampa Bay

has done this like look up and down at Florida has done this look at every contender and they're actually whether or not their books are structured that way, their decisions in season are, right? And so I think you're already seeing the vast majority of teams agree that like Stars and Scrubs is kind of how we're going to try and do it. And it's sort of an interesting, it's an interesting dynamic because I do think as cap grows, and especially if you're right, and I think you are, that as as cap growth becomes the norm again,

it's going to be star players soaking up the majority of that growth. Um, you know, if, If that remains consistent, then I do think you are going to see more uniformity in terms of the books, which will match the sort of decision-making that we're already seeing at a consensus level across the league right now. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to. Okay, I guess before we get out of here, I should close the conversation of this since we did start it using Eliza Peterson as a launching pad. I know you're the author of the article, why I don't worry. What would be your sort of calculated guess right now in terms of the resolution of this from like a timeline to a term perspective? Yeah, I mean, I'm really reluctant to fill this vacuum with speculation and that's what it would be.

So I want to be clear that I don't know. But the, you know, I would just say my lean when it comes to hockey players is always that they're more likely to stay put than not. Yeah. And when you really look at the mechanics of it, you know, it's not easy. that teams are so protected in and have so much good weaponry at their disposal in keeping their own talent if they're really motivated to do so that, you know, I would wager that's far in a way the most likely. Like, let me put it this way. Let me handicap it, right? Pedersen remains on an extension after the season.

I put it like minus, a minus 200. Oh, I think even here, I think there's like absolutely no reason to think that he's not. Yeah, like I would say that's the overwhelming favorite. In terms of futures. My question, though, I think it's much more interesting because I think, like, he's going to be on the team, is what the term is on that extension. Right. Just because he signs a contract doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be eight year. I'm going to be here for the rest of my prime.

And I'm very, because he's in a unique spot where he's going to be 26 one month at the next year, right? It's not even some of these extensions we've seen with Nylander or with Pasternak where, and a Pasternak was a year younger, but it's like 27, 28. all of a sudden then you start getting into a different age range and different neighborhood. Yeah, different risk profile for the teams. Like, you can bake in a four-year deal and still cash in in a salary cap world. What's the cap going to be like in four years from now? It's going to be incomparable compared to right now. Totally.

Three years and you hit unrestricted free agency at 28 on your fourth contract. Right. And that's pretty unique. So for sure, there's. Especially with what, what does Quinn Hughes have? I've left on his deal three years? Yeah. Yeah, that's something I'd be pushing against, I think, in the direct management.

Try and stagger those a little bit. Yeah. All right, Tom. Do you have any parting thoughts on this? Do you think we kind of hit it all? I mean, obviously, it's such an interesting conversation, I think, like, just philosophically in terms of like what's going to, what the future is going to look like for the league. Well, I'm glad we had it in a way that was less about Pedersen and more about what it means,

big picture for the state of the league where the league is. is going and how it's going to evolve as we get back to some sense of business normalcy on the other side of the player sort of debt being paid off. So I think that's a fascinating approach. And it's a fascinating approach to take for a player who's got to be one of the five guys. You just absolutely have to make time to see live if you can. The subtlety of his game, some of the things that he does on the ice. And especially when, you know, you've got him playing with Quinn Hughes and J.T. Miller and Hironic just felling guys with Slaps. shots and best are picking spots.

I mean, right now that five-man unit, that's the best show in hockey. I mean, he's just, he's so cool because skill. Like, you see that, that backdoor tap-in assist he had in Pittsburgh, right? That, like, the actual pass itself was just so beautiful. But how much space he created on the move before that.

Yeah. And then now the fact that he's put on a bunch of muscle into his mid-20s and weight and, like, embraces and initiates contact. And he creates space that way as well. I just think it's, it's a sight to behold. So I co-assigned that. He's just so disciplined about going to dirty areas.

And he was when he was like 170 pounds. Right. But now that he's 6-2 and, I mean, he'd never reveal his actual weight, but closer to 200 for sure, it's a totally different proposition for opponents and an awful lot of fun for Canucks fans to watch. I love that. All right. Plug some stuff on the way out. What do you want to listen to check out? Oh, man.

I'm going to have so much trade deadline stuff at the athletic. Oh, my God. Trade deadlines are on the corner, I guess. That's right. Six weeks away. Canucks are going to be buyers for the first time in 12 years. There's going to be so much trade deadline stuff at the athletic Vancouver. Check that out.

And then Canucks Talk 650. And on any podcast feed or podcast catcher you use five shows a week. Lots of fun with me and Jamie Dodd. Awesome, buddy. Well, it's good to have you back in town. We will certainly have you on again shortly. I think we still actually have to do our East Bear versus Bull case soon because we did that for the West before the break. Thank you, everyone, for listening to us.

My only plugs are go join a Discord server. The invite link is in the show notes. Check out the YouTube channel. We put out a show about Gabe Valardi and Nikola Eilers with Daryl Belfry this week. Keep that going next week as well. And that's all for today. So thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.