The Hockey PDOcast - NHL Contract Structures, Operating in Different Markets, and Edges for Teams

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Steve Werier to tap into his experience working on player contracts with the Florida Panthers by talking about the NMC vs. NTC fallout from the Jacob Trouba saga, utilization of media to get your message out, competitive edges for teams in different markets, and strategy for rebuilding clubs.  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.

Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey P.D.O. cast. My name is Dimitra Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Steve Ware here. Steve, what's going on? Hey, Dimitri, what's up? Great to be back. It's our third installment. We've previously done trade headline episode. We did an off-season episode, and those are the themes of those. This one's going to be a little different. We're going to do some sort of in-season moves, business. this side of things in particular. I think we've got a lot to catch up on. I'm excited to have you on because obviously over the past week or so, a lot of the NHL conversation has been centered around the Jacob Truba trade, kind of everything that facilitated that the New York Rangers choices they made in making that happen. And we finally have someone on that's qualified to speak on it based on their

real life experience, having actually navigated topics like this with NHL team. So I'm excited to get into it. I know you and I are messaging a lot before we got on. about sort of the intricacies of a no trade clause or a no move clause. I think listeners would be really interested to learn a little bit more about kind of the detailed approach, I guess, to a way contracts are structured from your experience and sort of that process in general of ironing out the language so that the terms satisfy both sides and I guess how a team and a player get to a position that the Rangers were in with Trubo where they had a choice to make and they used or leveraged one option they had

to ultimately kind of work around the players' demands and get what they ultimately wanted? Sure. You know, I think within the league there isn't any confusion or ambiguity or at least not much in terms of, you know, the differences between a no trade and a no move and the consequences of having or not having one versus another. You know, it's pretty simple. There's two different provisions in the CBA.

And the first one is in no trade. And a no trade simply means, you know, a team and the player agree that during, you know, certain set years during the player contract, the team will not trade the player to certain clubs. And who those certain clubs are depend, A, on how many teams a player is given on his no trade list. And the second one is, you know, when does that list delivered? And in some cases, you know, is it delivered at all? you know, the second type of provision is a no move clause, and a no move clause essentially means the player can't be traded, but also can't be put on waivers.

So it's stronger and different than the no trade. And again, you know, like the no trade and no move clause is, you know, a provision that most players do not get, you know, under the CBA, the only players who are allowed to even try to get these clauses are players who are negotiating for, you know, their unrestricted free agency years. So that either means, you know, players who have attained seven or so years of experience

under their contract under the CBA. And so it could either be a player, you know, on their post-entry-level contract who signs a long-term deal that includes both, you know, restricted and unrestricted years, in which case only the unrestricted years are eligible for no-moving, no-trade protection, or just a player who's, you know,

post their entry level and restrict free agency phase, and they're negotiating purely for UFA years, and in which case all those years are eligible to receive those types of protection. But even though they're eligible, again, it's pretty rare, and it's typically players who have leverage in contract negotiations. So, you know, sort of those upper echelon players who are in demand for multiple teams and might go to clubs and say, you know, hey, I'm a free agent or I'm a restricted free agent on your team.

I'm considering signing, but I know I have options. and part of having those options means, A, I want this kind of salary, and B, if I'm committing to you rather than someone else, I want to make sure I have some control over my destiny in terms of A, can you trade me and B, if you can, where will I go? So, you know, the language itself is pretty straightforward. It's pretty simple. You know, where it gets interesting is what's happened, you know, a little bit in the Truba situation where you have a player. who has no trade laws, and they provide a trade list, and they say to the team, you know, you can't trade me to these, say, 15 clubs. And then the team comes and says, hey, you know what, we don't think it's working out here. We have a couple scenarios. Number one is we can trade you to a team that we know is on your trade list and you have the right to block going to. And you can

either say yes, in which case we'll make the deal, or you can say no. And if you say no, we are going to place you on waivers. And it's possible that that team, who we are not allowed to trade you for, but for you, you know, waiving your trade rights and consenting, they may claim you. And there's been some reaction that, like, that is wrong or that shouldn't be part of a no trade clause. But again, based on, you know, the letters of the provisions, it's pretty clear that that's permissible, which is different than saying, is that right?

And, you know, I haven't heard all the commentary on the issue, but I did this morning quickly listen to Alan Wall. And Alan Walsh prevented the scenario that was somewhat like this. And Alan Walsh, for your listeners who you don't know, is one of the most prominent agents in the game, very active in the players association, who I've negotiated with on a number of contracts, including some that had some no move and no trade protection. But anyway, Alan's comment was, hey, if you go to a player and say, we want to trade you to a team that is on your trade list. and if you say no, we will put you on waivers and that team's going to trade you. Well, that's not fair.

You know, that's against the spirit. I think you actually use this phrase like that's capture convention. And I totally disagree with that actually because that's actually better for the player than what their actual rights are in that scenario because their rights in that scenario is the team can go play someone waivers if they want to. And there's nothing the player can do.

But instead, in this scenario, The team is saying to the player, hey, instead of putting you on waivers, you have the option of accepting a trade somewhere. And that's not necessarily a bad thing for the player. It gives them more optionality, especially if there's different teams involved. But even if there isn't, you know, I've spoken to a number of active and former players around the league this week who all said, you know, one of the things they feel strongly about is that certain players have earned the right to avoid the optics and the embarrassment of being placed on waivers when they've negotiated a substantial contract. And so a scenario like that where the player can maybe avoid the optics of being waived, you know, isn't the worst. And moreover, it's a different scenario.

Sometimes the trade has retention or otherwise. So it's not just, you know, straight up either or. There's some strategic reasons why both the team and player might, in some cases, you know, want to preserve that type of optionality. But where I think it gets really interesting and where, you know, if I was an agent, I would say this type of scenario actually doesn't align with what's supposed to be allowed under the CBA. And this isn't exactly what happened in Truba, but you could see it happening in another case, is if a team goes to a player and says, hey, here's what's going to happen.

You have a no trade list. You don't have a no move, pause. Here's what we're going to do. We have a trade to move you to Team X. And let's just pick a random team on a no trade list for no reason at all. Let's pick Buffalo. So we're going to trade you to Buffalo. But if you say no, which is your right to say no, we're going to place you on waivers.

And Buffalo is going to claim you because we are going to make a trade with Buffalo to ensure, you know, they make that claim and we make them whole or we give them a draft pick or something like that. In that sort of scenario, which people have called out, I actually don't think that's okay and shouldn't be okay under the CBA because technically a trade mean, you know, you're involuntarily moving a player in a way that's other than waivers. And if you're going to put a player on waivers and you're also sort of, you know, giving assets to a team to make a claim, it's arguable that you aren't just waiving the player and that's not what's causing them to move. They're actually moving because you're inducing another team, you know, through trade assets after the waiver placement.

So that situation, I think, is more interesting. But in any event, you know, lots of, for different ways to look at this and, you know, definitely going to result in some back and forth, I think, between the league and teams and the PA going forward. Well, and that's not what happened here, right? By all accounts, Truvuck essentially got to at least not go to both the blue jackets and maybe the red wings, depending on your mileage on reporting recently and got to ultimately pick going to Anaheim out of the options available to him. Obviously, he wanted to be in New York first and foremost. I think the reason why this is so interesting is I think fans generally all they typically care about at the time of assigning

when it's reported and announced is just the front-facing A.A.V. And that makes a lot of sense because it ultimately dictates how much cap room your team has left to spend. And you can kind of go from there. I find the sort of unveiling of contract terms and specifics in terms of all the negotiating and assets involved, even more interesting, though, right? Because just seeing how players sort of prioritized, depending on their situation, long-term security versus, say, maximizing their payday and earning power, via upfront signing bonuses. And so stuff like term, salary, signing bonus, base structure, trade protections, all of those are sort of bargaining chips and assets for both sides to deploy these negotiations.

And so take Trubas deal, for example, you know, he gets traded from the Jets in that summer of 2019. He immediately signs the seven-year deal with the Rangers. And you just look at the structure of it. And it's like, all right, well, he got $22 million in signing bonuses paid out in the first three years, which brought out of the 56 total. 30 million in just the first three years of the seven. And then he got this full no move cause in years two to five.

Now, I imagine, without having been privy to the negotiations and being inside the room, that he probably could have gotten that no move cause extended to years six and seven if he'd really prioritized it and wanted to in exchange for a lower AV and lower salary to create additional cap flexibility for the Rangers because we know a team like that is generally going to be at least while they're competing and they're generally are always trying. to compete maxed out up against the cap. And so every million here there matters for them. And so I imagine they probably would have sacrificed some of that trade flexibility in order

to bring his salary down. He chose not to do that. And that's how he got into the spot. So I find that sort of stuff. Obviously, it's on a case by case, player by player and maybe even agent by agent basis. But the way sort of the contracts are rolled out and laid out based on what each side is looking for is probably the most interesting dynamic of this to me. Yeah, I think that's right.

You know, a simple way to look at it is if there's 31 teams that can trade for you, easier for a team to make a deal. And the fewer teams you can make that move with, you know, whether it's a no move or more trade, the harder it gets on the club. And certainly there's tradeoffs and there's tradeoffs in every negotiation. And I think, you know, you're right without visibility into, you know, that particular negotiation. If a player, you know, is taking off the table additional trade and move and protection,

that might make the team a little more incentivized to move on salary structure or the amount of the salary in AAV. And it raises lots of interesting questions if you're a player going forward and with the CBA coming up for renewal in a year or two potentially or renegotiation, like do players consider something that you see in the NBA, which is a player option? You know, with that help, if a player says, hey, I'm going to sign a two-year deal, but the second year of the deal, you know, is a player option. And so if I don't want to exercise it, you know, I become a free agent and I'm not stuck.

And that sort of means, hey, you know, you trade me, you know, in year one, I have a right to shorten the deal or maybe exercise some leverage to prevent the deal in the first place. You know, that's one scenario or B, do players, you know, when we talk, again, going back to sort of the initial conversation, we're talking about a nibre conversation. We're talking about a narrow subset of players here, right? You know, there are only the players with enough leverage

to say, not only can I sort of negotiate for a decent salary, but I can negotiate these trade and move protections that make the team's job harder. You're talking upper echelon players. And so maybe it raises, you know, in some players, say, do I negotiate for shorter term deals? Either way, I just sort of take it

a year or two at a time, knowing I'm going to be near a max contract type of player and benefit from a rising cap, but also just preserve my ability to choose where I go. And if things aren't working out great or maybe things look better somewhere else, you know, moving up that ability to sort of control where you go and when. Yeah, I imagine from a player's perspective, especially it's so hard to project ahead if you're signing a seven or eight year deal because a lot of these guys are probably signing it, like in Trubas case,

where he was what, 24, 25 years old at the time. And it's like, all right, in year seven or year eight of this deal, that must feel like another lifetime away. So it doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

But obviously, we eventually get to that point. Regardless, the signing bonus part of this is interesting to me because obviously, and I want to get into some of the negotiations you had, maybe we didn't have to get into like specific sort of conversations of details,

but just the general process because for the listeners that don't know, you're with the Panthers in that mid-20s period. You played an integral role. in working on the deals in that, what, summer of 2016, essentially for that combination of that core of Barcov, Hubert O, Echblad, Trocheck. And I'm always fascinated by sort of the prevalence, I guess, of signing bonuses in these deals and how much they matter. I think certainly it makes sense from a player's perspective.

It increases your immediate payday in terms of just getting that one lump sum payment every summer. And also it makes it more difficult, certainly, to buy out the contract as well. And I know we had that sort of era of kind of these mega UFA buyout proof essentially deals where it wouldn't really make the sense for the team to do so and really inhibit it in that way. And I say that because obviously in this case, a team like the Rangers or the Leafs or any sort of deep pocket big market team is going to be getting a bit of a competitive advantage in their willingness and ability to just wield that.

Right. Like for them, some of these expenditures don't really matter or move the needle so they can just sign up for essentially the maximum they're allowed to within the CBA, whereas other teams like, let's say Winnipeg, for example, here on the Truba case, we saw them recently, and within the past two summers, sign a couple big deals in Shifley and Hellebuck, for example, and even the Dylan DeMello one, which came out to just under 5 million A.A.V. And the actual signing bonus money they included in those is incredibly minimal

compared to a lot of the other comparable deals we see around the league. I think Sheifley and Hellebuck both got just $5 million in the first year of the deal, and that's it. Whereas you look at deals like the Rangers typically signed or even Florida recently with a lot of their big name signings, it's almost exclusively tied up in signing bonuses. You got any thoughts on sort of that and like what advantage that kind of provides and that being another wrinkle in a lot of these negotiations? Sure. I mean, part of it depends on the particulars of the player and the city and the state they're signing in, right? like there's tax implications of a bonus versus salary. Also, you know, certain low tax jurisdictions,

if you're signing, you know, say in a Florida, you definitely want to get as much money up front and early, you know, in a zero state tax state in case, again, you're traded or something else happens in front of the player's perspective, obviously, you know, present discounted value money, everything else, more money earlier is always better, front loading versus backloading. And again, you know, one thing people always forget is a contract with term isn't a locked in guarantee, right? Like a five-year deal under the CBA right now is really just a series of one-year contracts where at the end of each year,

the team has the right to buy the player out with, you know, if they're over 26 for two-thirds of the amount left, over double the time. And if they're under 26 for one-third of the remaining amount for double the time. So, you know, there is some risk involved and there's definitely incentives in getting, as much as early as possible. But to your broader point, sure, you know, deeper pocketed teams with the wherewithal to do so in a cap, a sport with a cap, are going to look to every advantage they can get to sort of provide value to players, whether financial or otherwise, to sort of supplement what's an equal-ish playing field in terms of salary.

And whether that means, you know, giving players more money up front, whether that means, like, really investing in the off-ice environment, whether that's like better training, you know, team services. You know, we hear with John Monsoto, like amenities to the family, you know, maybe importing some palm trees. I don't know. Like, whatever you can do to make things more alluring in addition to what you're allowed to spend under the cap teams are going to do. They will. You got any other thoughts on either the Truba situation or from the Rangers perspective or anything of this? I think we've seen a lot of. lot of certainly I was talking about this with our paledrants on the Sunday show.

I think the fallout of it was we saw a lot of people going on TV and providing commentary about how they think this is a bad look for the Rangers because not only the optics of how it was sort of dragged out publicly, but also just leveraging a player in this way and kind of at least making it seem like they're obviously doing everything that's allowed within the CBA right now, but kind of going against the spirit of the agreement, let's say, in terms of the trade restrictions to get what they ultimately wanted, that that's going to impact them negatively in some way in the future, whether it's going to be players being less likely to sign or maybe drawing a hard line in negotiations they have with them where it's going to have to be a full

no-move clause, and that's something they're going to prioritize as opposed to salary. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I sort of feel like we've already seen countless examples around the league, but Vague being the most prominent one where in their short existence, they've had no trouble essentially consolidating and constantly trading up and trading players and treating them as not disposable, but essentially if they find a new shinier toy available, they're willing to trade in a player they already have despite their contract agreement with them to achieve that. And players still, I think generally would love to play in Vegas and want to play for them.

Part of it is all the state taxes and all the amenities you mentioned. I think part of it is also just winning is always going to be a draw. And if you have an organization that is competitive and contending every year, players are always going to want to be there. So I think from the Rangers perspective, my own personal feeling is that this won't impact them detrimentally in any way because it's New York City. It's a huge market. And they're competitive right now.

And so players are going to want to play there and we'll sign up and it won't be an issue. Do you have any thoughts on that and kind of if there could be some sort of a trickle down effect? Maybe not even just for the Rangers, but moving forward that teams would consider in situations like this? Yeah, I think I'm like intermediate, long term, pretty skeptical. you said that a team playing in Madison Square Garden is going to have real trouble attracting hockey players in a 32-ish team league. That they're going to be fine. You know, short-term, that might have some ramifications with their current group and so on.

You know, I do think, you know, the trickle-down effects will be sort of will be heard. And, you know, what I heard directly from some players is players are going to be very careful with their families and speaking, you know, with their agents in advance of negotiations to make sure they have a full grant. about, you know, even the remote contingencies of what couldn't happen, you know, under a player contract in certain situations. But, yeah, I don't think there's going to be a massive fallout of, you know, players being unwilling to, you know, sign in that market based on this scenario, again, like, very few players have the leverage to sort of look at those situations at all. So, you know, I doubt it trickles down too far in the long term, but it definitely,

you know, we're raised a front of mind for most players, hey, how did these play out? And again, this was, like there was some factors, I think,

involved with this team and player that made it particularly, you know, I believe it's not the wrong word, but maybe unfortunate, just in terms of personal circumstances and the COVID year and, you know, other factors that made this like acutely,

you know, unfortunate, it's probably the right word. But, you know, I don't know how it shakes out. I think if, the right way for players to probably think about it is how do we address this

meaningfully in the next CBA as opposed to like, you know, what team do we want to sort of avoid a little bit, which won't happen. It's sort of interesting. You went through this. This is sort of the natural progression. I think we're going to see other not specific instances like this because obviously this was a unique one, but in terms of teams doing stuff to kind of test the boundaries of what's allowed and what's not and the way they perceived.

I'm curious to see how that plays out, right? Because we went through in that mid-2010s, even late 2010s period, I think the opportunities for teams to create competitive advantages was much wider because there was a bit of an information gap in terms of utilization and willingness to adopt analytics. And we saw like lopsided trades and highly questionable signings and all sorts of stuff. I think teams, they're certainly still prone to making rash decisions and unfortunate and mistakes, but generally teams have wisened up in terms of a lot of this stuff.

And so the opportunity for edges is, is harder to come by and everything's becoming a bit more sort of uniform in that way and stuff like this in terms of contracts. And we've seen certainly the past couple of years the exploitation of LTIR to increase your your cap hits on your team heading into the playoffs compared to what's allowed in the regular season. We've seen teams adopt that as they push for Stanley Cups. And now stuff like this, I'm curious to see. what the sort of next steps on that are. One final note on the Rangers,

and then we'll go to break, and then we'll touch on a couple of different topics. I wanted to talk to you about the utilization, I guess, of media here in terms of like spreading messages and either strategically getting certain stuff out there or not and how that is sort of incorporated. You got any thoughts on that? You know, not a ton on this one. What about the concept of soft tampering?

Yeah, I was trying to pivot to that. Let's talk about that one instead. You know, the soft tampering, I think you're alluding to the situation with, or lack of situation, but Brady Kachuk and the Rangers and the Senators. That one, my reaction is amusement more than anything else. like Brady Kachuk, so 25, 26-year-old, 35-year-old, 35-point-per-game player, he's the captain of the team,

you know, signed through July 2028. If I was in the owner's position in Ottawa, the situation that would concern me the most would be if my scouts and GM came to me and said, hey, we're engaging in trade conversations and gathering our intelligence from, you know, teams and media and whoever. And when we talk to teams, we just say,

hey, who are you interested in our club? And it's really weird. You know, these other teams aren't, they don't want pretty cheap chock. They say they're uninteresting. That would terrify me. I'd be like, what am I missing here? You know, this guy, by all means,

as a player, every team would want and bend over backwards to get. And if I found out that, you know, other clubs weren't interested in sort of making an offer for him, I would start being very curious as to what could I possibly be missing that I don't think I'm missing. But the inverse of that, which is the current situation, and, you know, maybe another team wants this clearly very desirable player. I don't know.

There's not really too many real-world consequences of that. It shouldn't be too surprising. I don't think it has much of an effect. It probably isn't even much of a surprise to Brady to Chuck again, that, like, other teams may or may not want to trade for him if they ever could. But I'm not sure really, like, if there's much to get up in arms about, if you're that team. I think, you know, in that particular situation,

it may even be a little bit of a product. You have Michael Ann Lauer who just bought a team, right? So he buys the senators. He has Steve Steyos and this group of guys who've probably been advising him for a little bit. You know, they're looking at buying a team. The team's run by Geridorian, who, you know, has been, for better or worse,

you know, maligned pretty extensively for some of the decisions he made as GM. And so this group probably came in, really excited that they were going to have a, you know, hit the ground running with some, you know, interesting trades and signings and a really good young core. And that hasn't totally happened yet this year. And there's probably some frustration boiling over from that. That's like, this is the story and this is in the media.

But, you know, does it have practical impact? I don't think so. I think like the soft tampering situations that would concern me more as a manager would be players on the roster who were maybe like up for new contracts or. or maybe lower end tiers of the roster who are looking for, you know, leverage in a salary negotiation or arbitration coming up, where maybe it would be a little surprising to hear, or like affirming to them and their agents to know how much demand

or interest there may or may not be from other clubs. But in this case, it's sort of more amusing and puzzling than damaging. I don't know what your thoughts on that one are. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the way I read into it was it was more so an opinion piece of like this is a type of player that the Rangers would covet and probably need based on their current roster construction. And it's like, yeah, I think that's pretty obvious and self-explanatory and didn't necessarily need to be said.

I can see why it would be annoying from the organization's perspective because one, I think there's probably an element of, especially with how terminally online, most especially young players are right now, you like go online and all of a sudden you see all these articles and rumors about that always have misleading headlines and get blown out of proportion. So it's like, oh, what? Like, this team's interested. Am I available?

What's going on? So all of a sudden, you're sent into a bit of a craze or hysteria for no reason. I think from a fan perspective, certainly stuff like this happens. And it gets blown out of proportion. And then it leads to, you know, angst, I guess. And so from an organization's perspective, I see it as kind of like an unnecessary thing to be happening as you're just trying to mind your own business and move along. your season and keep winning games. So I get that part of it. But I ultimately don't think it's that

big of it. I know that the, Ily Friedman's been talking about this a lot, right? Like the, there was that memo sent out about just tampering in general even before this last month and how the league's going to be trying to really crack down on that. And I feel like this is just sort of a bit of a reminder of that in terms of the league trying to get some of this out of the game. But as I think you and I spoke about in the offseason one, in terms of like preliminary phone calls, engaging interest with agents and teams and other third parties, like it's almost impossible to entirely rid this stuff because it's just natural human conversations that are going to be happening and drawing a hard line and removing it seems next to impossible from the league's perspective.

Yeah, I think that's right. It's always going to happen. It's not only going to happen. It's not going to happen from, you know, players deputized or not who are going to, you know, try to recruit their, you know, friends and other, you know, high-end guys to their team. and that's going to happen at an event like the four nations and it's just going to happen organically and naturally

and I think your point is right just sort of in that extremely online era and taking it from perspective of how a fan base might react as opposed to just ownership it's certainly something like teams don't want to need especially maybe when they aren't

in a position of strength with standing at that point in time I'm glad you brought out the Four Nations there because I got my mind jogging and I want get into that with you a little bit here on the other side of the break. First, we are going to take that break, though. And then we come back. We'll pick it right back up with Steve Warrior.

You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O. cast streaming on the SportsD.O. network. All right. We're back here on the Hockey P.D.O.cast with Steve, before we went to break, you touched on the four nations. And I want to ask you about that from, I think, both the team and player perspective, I think they're sort of inextricable here. First off, in a recent 32 thoughts, Elliot Freeman had this note about how commercial breaks in these games that are going to happen within the tournament are going to be an extra minute at a

length going up from the 90 seconds that we typically see in NHL games. And I think that's interesting because it'll probably lead to inflated usage, maybe not so much for like Team Canada, for example, because of how much depth and balance they have, but maybe like a team Finland, for example, where you look at the state of their blue line and wonder whether like we might see Merrill Hayskin and minutes going up into the 30s. And I'm curious from a team perspective for the stars of your gym nil or someone within an organization how you sort of feel about that because obviously I think the league is very excited about this in terms of the marketing opportunity and the spectacle it'll be and the ability obviously to kind of use this to then parlay into the 2026

olympics as well and getting into best on best hockey which I think we all want to see but there's certainly some risks involved from fatigue for the players involved and obviously every time you step on on the ice in a competitive setting injury as well I think for the players there's a great honor to be playing. I was also watching this Alan Walsh interview on his podcast, and you could essentially see him salivating in the clip where he's just talking about how this is going to be a feather in the cap for players involved come negotiation time.

Maybe not the stars who are obviously already cemented there, but maybe younger players who are due for a big deal coming up and how this sort of vaults them into a different tier. You have any notes on that, either from the team or the player perspective? Yeah, I mean, I think Alan's right-ish that like, you know, any publicity like that is good publicity for a player and it's not going to hurt. In terms of league-wide exposure, maybe a little less so for a tournament like this for like the vast majority of the rosters are sort of, I'm not sorry, but, you know, it's already the game's lead and there's no surprises and no one's going to be like, okay, Nathan McKinnon scored three goals against team Finland. and maybe he's a max salary player that we didn't think about before. You know, I think your point about the commercial breaks and usage is interesting.

You know, again, like if you're Jim Doe and Heskin and into your player, that's sort of just, you know, one of those factors you can't control and you watch and enjoy and hope your guys come out healthy. And, you know, probably it's going to depend on, you know, coaching staff and philosophy and usage and all that. And, you know, maybe, like you said, it's a little different. and a best on death tournament where it's not like, hey, we can

fit our fourth line and get our first line out a little different when your fourth line is, you know, maybe, I don't know, but look at Team Canada and try to pick who the fourth line group is. You're probably comfortable with those players out in any scenario, break or no break, but, you know, interesting sort of experimental lab to do stuff like that in.

And if you had that same rule applying, you know, maybe in the HL or at another level, it would probably yield some interesting results. But yeah, it'll be interesting. you see how this tournament goes. And to the point about player exposure, you have to think something like was done in the World Cup where he had a under 21 team or something like that,

that would be even more neat in terms of certain players maybe getting to jump up on a bigger stage and elevate their profile, even not just for contractual purposes, but also just for like marketing and endorsement opportunities and stuff like that. Yeah, we were talking about this a while back in the PDOCAST Discord.

I said it's sort of tongue-in-cheek, But the more I think about it, the more I want to see it. I don't know if the league would ever do so because it would require lumping players into age brackets. And I'm not sure how excited they'd be about that. But a four generations tournament instead of four nations. You've got like 18 to 22, 22 to 26, 26 to 30 and then 30 plus. I think would be incredibly interesting.

It would create all sorts of interesting dynamics. But I wouldn't hold my breath on. All right, we got 15 minutes left here. I got three topics on my docket. I want to talk to you about the Kevin Adams presser last week and the Sabres because I thought he had some interesting notes in there. I'm using interesting loosely, I think more so questionable.

But there's that, there's the rising cap and the implications of it over the next couple of years from a team perspective and then rebuilding teams and sort of the way they choose to operate and what the optimal strategy is. I want to make sure we get into the most interesting one. So I'll give you the option of picking the first one you want to get into and then we'll go from there. Let's just go in order to start with the Sabers.

Let's do it. So do you have a chance to watch the interview? The full one is on YouTube. I believe it's like a 25-minute pressure from Kevin Adams, where he looks absolutely distraught and at times agitated by a lot of the questions. I think understandably so, especially at the point of the schedule it came in, not that there was a good one for the Sabres this season essentially, but it was like right after they catastrophically blew that 4-0 lead, I believe,

at home to the avalanche. And you got asked about a lot of stuff and then brought up, you know, Buffalo's, I guess, complications with bringing in players or guys on no trade list that they've tried to acquire previously in citing that they have taxes versus palm trees and all that good stuff. And I think saying we're not a destination city, what were your thoughts on that and kind of where the Sabres are at right now in terms of their place in the standing and the reputation and then I guess ability to like lure and keep prize players? Sure. So I have two little kids who don't sleep. so I haven't caught up on the final season of succession, let alone many times of the full of 25.

This presser was a way more interesting. But I did, you know, I catch, caught snippets of it. And, you know, I heard from a few folks here and there what the balance of it said. And like, listen, whether, you know, it's one issue, whether or not and how he might have or should have said it. But like, most of what he said, you know,

it's not wrong, objectively. Like, would it be easier if, Buffalo had great weather and lower taxes. Sure. Is that sufficient to build a championship team? No. And like, I don't know, like the way I'd like to look at the situation is like try to invert, right? Instead of saying like, hey, it would be better if we had this, which is pretty controversial.

Think about it as like, what are the things that are in your control that you don't want to do if you want to make. you know, your location, and in this case, Buffalo, a destination. Like, you don't want to do a number of things to make it harder to recruit. So, like, you don't want to have, you know, a insufficient team services operation that doesn't welcome incoming players with, like, a perfectly thought out plan about pediatricians and schools for kids and, you know, real estate and cars and programs and all that, because, you know, that's something you can control. And that matters.

You know, you don't want to hire, and this isn't Buffalo. specific, like in any market. You don't want to hire maybe, you know, a coach who isn't super progressive and player friendly that's going to make players want to come there. You don't want to have, you know, an absence of sort of like managerial acumen and talent that helps you identify and retain the best players and create a culture. And like, those are the things that you need to focus on in any market. And listen, you know, you look around the league right now in terms of point percentage and like Winnipeg's at the top, Minnesota's at the top, you know, Edmonton was in the cup finals.

Like Columbus is super resilient year after year. And, you know, none of those places have palm trees, right? So it's not like the be all and end all. And I don't think there is like a simple answer here. Like I heard, you know, a snippet of Jeff Merrick yesterday. And he made a comment along the lines of like, well, you look at the Buffalo front office and only Jason Carmanos has any experience. And like, I think assistant GM, Sam Ventura would have probably take an issue with that comment if it's down. Cupring wasn't plugging his ears.

But I don't think that's, you know, fair game. And I'm always very partial to not taking that approach of like, oh, you know, the only cure here is we need, you know, managerial experience because there's lots of experience managers who fail and there's lots of the first time managers

or managers who are bumped up who are massive successes. So, you know, it's unfortunate where they are now in terms of, you know, this sort of decade plus of performance. But that's, not a simple sort of thing to pinpoint. They've had a series of, you know,

different managers with different approaches that have had, you know, differing results. And it's tough. And, you know, I empathize it with them because what he's really implying here and people have touched on that is he's saying, like, I know we're in a hole right now. And, you know, Elliot always says, like,

when you're in a hole, people throw you a shovel and not a rope or something like that. And so, you know, going back to our no trade, no movement conversation, he's sort of saying, hey, we're in trouble here. people are yelling at me every day saying, why don't you trade for this guy and this guy? And like, I can't because A, I may not have the assets or B, those players have, you know, no trade clauses. And we're on that list.

So, you know, I empathize with where he's coming from. It just may not be like the best advertisement for player recruitment to come out and sort of, you know, wave that white flag. Yeah. I think there's one thing fans really hate is when they're frustrated. Their team is not doing anything. The GM comes out and says, I'm working hard. but nothing's happening. I don't think that really alleviates a lot of things they have.

And like something we talked about way long ago in Florida, you know, 14's current success is like you have to look at what the advantages might be to not be playing in Madison Square Garden, to be playing somewhere more remote and to capitalize on those like competitive advantages that might not be super apparent. So like you talked about, you know,

different types of approaches and different uses of data and different sort of, you know, non-cap spending related things to incentivize players and performance. Like all that matters. And, you know, ideally they use, you know, sort of being off that sort of central radar as sort of an opportunity to do, you know, more work like that, rather than sort of frame me as a disadvantage, honestly.

I just viewed it as a bit of a cop-out because obviously it's not an even playing field and there are certain limitations. But like, you take a player like Sam Reinhart, for example, who I guess is a great example of this because he ultimately did wind up going to the palm trees and signed there long term. He's a player who if you go back and you look at the reporting at the time pretty clearly wanted to stay in Buffalo, but it was around the pandemic. They only gave him the one-year deal and then they had that bubble season and he essentially wanted out at that point.

And I find it hard to blame him because he just wanted to be valued and respected and also win and neither of those things were happening in Buffalo. And that's why he wanted out and he went to Florida. And I don't think it was a matter of bolting and jettisoning and leaving for the palm trees. It just wound up working that way. So I think ultimately it's tough. It's a bit of a chicken and egg because if you can't get certain players, it's tougher to build a winning environment. But ultimately, I really do believe that if you have a place and you're winning and competing,

a lot of players are going to be very happy to get compensated handsomely to do so and just play meaningful hockey games for eight months a year. Like I think for a lot of the league, that's ultimately all the matters. Sure. And also, you know, going back to how the CBA is set up, right? Like, you have control over players you draft with some very limited exceptions. Like whether or not they want to play in your market or not, you have control over the players you draft for at least their entry level of deals. And on top of that, like, you have the ability to trade for any player in the league who hasn't

hit, you know, his UFA years or a contract that incorporates, you know, incorporates those UFOA years in a certain way because they don't have the right to have, you know, no trade or no no move clauses until they attain that seniority. So there is like a great, you know, a large amount of, you know, players and asset types that you have the freedom to pursue irrespective of what market you're in and what, you know, people may or may not think about that. And you just have to, you know, leverage those opportunities and it may be a blessing in disguise in some cases where, you know, those overpriced, in some cases, you know, veteran UFAs with a bunch of bidders, you may be out of that bidding, but that might actually

save you in some cases. All right. Let's quickly do rebuilding teams. We incorporate the cap in this if you want, but I'm curious for your takes on this. We've traded a bunch of messages about it. I think we've seen teams over the past couple years, but maybe especially notably this offseason and this season

that are in this rebuilding phase where they're not only bad, but they have a bunch of financial flexibility in terms of cap space and money to spend. And then different tax they've taken towards utilizing that and leveraging it and whether they've achieved the full capability of it or whether it's kind of half measures and just the general strategy of it. I think there's certainly, I mean, a lot of moving parts from a GM's perspective

in terms of whether they just got hired to oversee this rebuild or whether they've been there for a while and the pressure they faced to turn this thing around and show some sort of results or progress. Otherwise, they'll be out of a job before they can reap the rewards of it. I think also from an ownership perspective, depending on your team, it's a bit trickier to convince your owner if you're the GM to sign a bunch of massive checks

if the team's winning and not making a bunch of money and attendance is low and you're like all right what are we trying to ultimately accomplish here I think there's a lot of stuff that I've liked that the sharks have certainly done I'm less enthused about what the Blackhawks and the ducks and a few teams like that have done what do you think about sort of this concept

of the strategy I guess rebuilding teams take in this particular phase to at least give themselves maximum room to have these gains and then be able to profit off it by the time whatever young players they draft are actually good enough to compete. Yeah, I think both games and fans often underestimate

how much you have to do to put your team in the position to really compete to compete for a championship. And I think a good exercise is to like, you know, try to work backwards, right? Like if you're Chicago or Anaheimers, the teams you threw out there, San Jose, like put on a board the year you think you can compete for a cup, however many years that dab is out, and then work backwards today and think about,

like, what are all the things we think we need to do, you know, in addition to culturally and everything else, but just like strategically and asset-wise. And if you, you know, go through that exercise, you're probably going to say, like, we have to do so much in terms of, like, draft pick harvesting and just, like, getting as many picks as we can to make picks that turn out well. You know, we're going to have to do a ton in terms of like acquiring players, you know, early-ish in their careers so we can maybe lock them in to term and be in a good spot under the cap, but also just like acquire good player talent. And then had all that talent sort of peeking around the same point. And, you know, you take it that way and you realize you can't really cut any corners.

You sort of have to maximize like every little bit of leverage you have. You know, that's easier instead of done. said than done. You know, on one hand, you know, to your point, you want to sort of bring people into the building and have optimism. But also, you know, if you're a Chicago with a Connor Bidar or a San Jose with, you know,

Srebrenny and Smith and their guys, you know, everyone sort of acknowledges now more than they used to, right? That these young players are ready to be like, massive contributors to championship level teams. If not now, like in their age of age range of like 20, to 22, you know, as opposed to that sort of historic mindset of, oh, you know, players develop at 25, 27 or whatever. So, you know, with that mindset, it almost creates more urgency,

like, how can you speed that building up as much as you can without sacrificing sort of the ability to get there? And so there's, you know, there's different approaches. Like, I think, you know, Chicago's taken a bit of a peculiar approach with some of their veteran signings where you might argue, hey, you know, are those signings commensurate, you know, with talent and then, you know, the counterargument to that as well, they have to get the cap floor. But, you know, there's a lot of mechanisms and tools teams can use, you know, one of them that I haven't seen used as much as you might expect, although, you know, we sort of saw that I'm not using, but taking out the cap bases, you know, taking on on cap hit, being a cap broker, but even doing that not just

for like existing contracted players. You know, I find it surprising that no one's ever sort of said, hey, we're not competing this year. Why don't we, you know, sign a player to a deal? And then almost immediately, you know, flip them and retain and ship them to a team that's going to pay us considerable assets. And if you're like a Chicago and in Anaheim, like, you know, and there's caveats to this that you're only allowed to do this,

you know, have three of these on the book per league year. But, you know, have two teams come together and say, hey, one of us signs a player to a one year, $5 million deal, and each half, and the other team each half, well, then all of a sudden we can ship it at day one to another team for like a quarter of their original cost and get serious assets. So there's lots of trickery like that, and teams are all aware of it. But you sort of need to use, like, every one of those moves in your arsenal, and then you really have to be mindful of opportunity cost,

which is, like, what could you have done with that space that seems like it's an abundance, but really isn't, then what you do with it. And I think, you know, are you the critique of the Truba deal? And we'll see where that one goes in terms of what Anaheim does with them within a year and a half is like, you know, can you monetize that for more than you otherwise could have with that $8 million in Caspasia. Yeah, I think it's a bit of a counterintuitive thing because I'm in complete agreeance with you that if you draft the right star players, you're, and you're an organization,

you're like, all right, let's get together and let's pick a year that we think we're going to be ready to compete and then use that as our timeline. I imagine that whatever your organizations typically pick, the actual right answer is probably at least a couple years before that. The issue is that for a lot of these teams to get that top pick, if you're, you know, in the first overall sweepstakes, you essentially have to gut everything, get rid of anyone who's a remotely competent H.L. player and then start from scratch. And so you really have to essentially put together a full team in short order, which is obviously easier said than done. But it is a bit frustrating because as we see a lot of these young guys come in and immediately contribute and take over games, I was watching, I know they lost in the last couple minutes. But San Jose goes into Carolina on Tuesday night. And Salabini is like the best player on the ice. He's just comfortably winning minutes against Jordan Stahl and Jacob Slavin and Sebastian Aho.

And he's creating a ton of chances. And it's like, I'm pretty sure this guy is already good. enough. Obviously, he's going to continue to get better. He's still a teenager, but he's on an ELC right now making nothing, and he's already an impact player that seems like a massive competitive advantage that I would want to leverage and take advantage of as opposed to really slow playing this, which is what teams typically do. So it's tricky, but I find that a bit sort of frustrating, I guess, at times. Any other notes on rebuilding? We got like a minute here left or two minutes. I feel like we probably could do a full show on this, honestly,

because there's so many other nuances and variables that I want to get into with you. So maybe we should just save the rest of it for whenever I have you on next. Sounds good. I'm cool with that. All right, Steve. Well, this was fun. I'm sure the listeners enjoyed it. It's always great to have you on and pick your brain.

Looking forward to next time, thank you to the listeners for listening to us. If you want to help out the show and you enjoyed what you heard today, go smash that five-star button wherever you listen to the PDOCast. You can also pop into the PEDOcast Discord, where we've got, great banter every night as we watch the games together. And it's also the perfect spot for you to get in questions for future mailbags that we do on the show. So if you want to get involved in the conversation and be part of the PDOCS community, the invite Lakers in the show notes, get in there and join us.

We'll be back Thursday with our good pal, Kevin Woodley, coming in studio. We got a lot to catch up with him. We're going to talk about the McKenzie Blackwood trade, Thatcher Demko's return, all sorts of good stuff as it relates to goalies. I'm personally looking forward to it because I know that I'll just be. able to tee Kevin up and let him run a while with it. And those are always a crowd pleaser. So that's all for today. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.