The Hockey PDOcast - Trades, Contracts, and the Rising Cap Ahead of This Year’s Deadline

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Steve Werier to talk about a variety of trade and contract related subjects from both a team and player perspective ahead of this year's deadline. They discuss the Mikko Rantanen trade, his next contract, and how the rising cap is going to affect future deals. They also get into interesting ways unexpected organizations could get into the market as buyers, how long deals take to come together this time of year, running personnel decisions by your star players, the value of 1st round picks in years where the draft is considered to be weaker than usual, and showcasing potential trade candidates. 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.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitra Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Steve, what's going on, man? Hey, Dimitri, not much. I'm enjoying a few days vacation in Palm Springs, but happy to make time for my favorite podcast. This is going to be fun. We've had, it's been a bit of a recurring segment every time we have you on and try to do it kind of around, uh, landmark dates on the NHL calendar last year. We had you on around the trade deadline as well. We did the kind of offseason draft free agency sort of stuff. Then we talked about, which feels like ages ago now,

but it was somehow only a couple months ago, the Jacob Truba situation and the no move clause and everything that followed from that. Always happy to have you on. Get a bit of a behind the scenes look that we can provide for the listeners in terms of the team side of this and channeling all the experiences you've had. in the NHL, we've got the trade deadline coming up here. Obviously, everyone is very hyper-fixated right now on the Four Nations and the final that's coming this week.

But in a couple weeks, we got the trade deadline coming up. We already saw the festivities kick off early this year, I think, as a byproduct a little bit at least, of the Four Nations being on the calendar this year with a few trades, the Miko Randinen to the hurricanes, J.T. Miller to the Rangers. The stars got involved and moved their first for Michael Granville and Cody C.C. So we've seen some pretty high magnitude trades already. I'm sure many more are going to follow here leading up to the March 7th deadline. But I thought it would be fun to have you on and kind of keep going with the conversation we had around this time last year in terms of some of the, I guess, logistical stuff, right?

The considerations, the calculations, the calculus, the conversations that are happening, the machinations, how some of this stuff comes together. In particular, I think the rant and in trade was such a fascinating one that really captured the attention of both you and I, not only because it's so rare to see a player. of that caliber and that status moved like this in season. But I think the timing of it, the fact that we're all kind of anticipating this spike in the cap over the next three years and how maybe that played a part in the avalanche deciding to move on here and not commit to a long-term deal with him.

Let's get into it. Let's just kind of cover it from as many angles as we want. What was the most sort of interesting, I guess, wrinkle or component of that entire saga to you? Yeah, you know, I think, let me start with a couple of anecdotes. some personal experience that's going to lead to what I think was interesting about Rontonin, and I'm guessing a bit here, but just reading the tea leaves from what's been said,

you know, from player and GM and the media as well over the last few weeks. So here's an example. You know, a few years back, Vincent Trocheck was having his first full NHL season for us in Florida. And it was a breakout season. He, you know, he's scoring a bunch of goals. He ended up that year with like 20-something goals, 50 plus points in a year. where he started the season in the HL. And, you know, early in that season, I spoke to our owners.

I said, listen, we got to lock this guy up early. It's a good, promising player. And so I talked to his agent, Steve Rich, at OTK. And, you know, over time, we started talking about a three-year deal. And we were looking at comps. Like, at that time, there was, you know, Johnson, Pilat and Kuturov in Tampa. And we went back and forth. And Vince kept having a good year.

And we were talking about numbers. And, you know, mid-high-3s per year with a high-platform year that would set him up really. well. But Steve was really focused, you know, on a salary starting with four, four million dollars plus per year. And eventually, you know, became very clear we weren't going to do a three-year deal starting in the fours. And Steve came back and said, well, what would you do if we did a six-year deal instead of a three-year deal? And, you know, that, of course, meant we'd be buying up a bunch of UFA years and fast-forwarding, you know, to the end of the deal. We ended up signing Vince to a six-year

deal in the high fours. And when that deal got announced, someone, who was very regularly in our locker room at the time, said to me, do you ever think about why that deal ended up at that number? And I said, well, you tell me why. And the person said, Vincent Trochek comes into that locker room every day this season and sees Nick Bugstead. And Nick Bugstead has a salary of $4.1 million a year.

And for most of that year, was the second line center. Vince thinks he's better than Nick. And Vince needed a number that when he walks into that lock. room, it's clear that he's as good or as valued as Nick. And that's why he was willing to give you guys all those extra years to make sure his number was where it ended up. And I think there's some truth to that. And the other quick example is when we negotiated Jonathan Huberdow's contract,

he was on the heels of Alex Barkov doing a six-year deal that came in at 5-9. And even though Hubert's contract was his third, so he was given up fewer RFA years, there were more UFA years. And arguably he had more leverage for a higher number. we were able to keep that number down when I negotiated that deal to the exact decimal point of 5.9 per year for six years that Sasha Barkoff had because it didn't need to be stated that our view as a team was we weren't going to pay another young forward more than we were paying our franchise forward, which is all to say,

I'm curious with this, you know, the Rattanan saga, if, you know, the back and forth between him and his agent and the team, if they had maybe come to the abs and, said, listen, on an eight-year deal, given where the cap is going, and there's been all this talk lately, you know, about how the cap's going up to, you know, $100 million or so, and what that's going to mean, if perhaps he had come out to Colorado and said, you know, my number is either something in the 13s or more

or at least in the high 12s. And that's a significant range to me, because, of course, Nathan McKinnon is signed long-term in Colorado for 12-6. And it wouldn't surprise me if Colorado's management group, which includes, you know, Chris McFarland and Joe Sack, who have Stanley Cup rings to bolster their confidence in rightly so, but also includes Andrew Wilson,

who spent well over a decade as the go-to person in the league office for all things salary cap, and absolutely would be a guy in a group who, you know, collectively they would have sat down and had a very clear vision of where they were willing and not willing to go, and they wouldn't have been easily swayed by, you know, media narrative, public perception, or what an agent would say, you know, I wonder,

if that came into play a little more than it's been probably he talked about and if Colorado maybe put their foot down and said, this is Nate's team. Nate committed to us at a number that was below what he could have got paid because he wanted us to build a winning team around him. And we're going to hold firm

in that range because as much as there's a tendency nowadays is to say, hey, the cap's going up and therefore every player is going to make X percentage more because of you know, back dooring it from a percentage of the cap. I think he's, he's going to be a

to think a lot differently. And having been in management, I know management's view is, hey, listen, if we just pay everyone 12% more because the cap's up 12%, well then, you know, we're in the same spot we would have been before the cap changed.

And that's not how it works in practice. I think teams are strategic and they think about, you know, whether we should be paying top of the roster players maybe more and cutting corners elsewhere. So anyway, that's my first reaction of maybe that McKinnon number led to some friction

between Ranton's camp in Colorado, which ultimately led to Colorado saying let's, you know, let's monetize that asset sooner than later. And they did. They, you know, they locked in a player who's cost controlled at least for the next year and a half in Nietzsche's. And it looks so far not too bad for them.

Well, and this is, I think, the most interesting part of this. And I, and I'm why I don't have this conversation with you because since then we've gotten a more clear picture of the projections, right?

It's going from $88 million, the cap to 95.5 next year to 104, the year of, following and then all the way up to 1.13.5 for 27, 28. And I'm curious for your take on from both the team and the player side and get some of your experience with this, how much of an influence that's going to have on some of the contracts we see in a decision making, right? Because I think from a player perspective, you certainly look at that and you envision a bigger piece of the pie available for you. I think you want to considering the length of earning power

in terms of how many years you realistically can cash in in this sport, especially in UFA years. You want to maximize that earning power. And so you want to try to time it. So you're coming up again for a new deal around these times when there's more money available. Yet from the team perspective, I'd argue it's going to become more imperative than ever to sign your stars to these deals where they're providing surplus value relative to their cap hit. But obviously that's always been important.

The ads are another great example of this. You talk about McKinnon and the contract, they were able to sign him off with their ELC and how that allowed them to put together that stack team that ultimately won the Cup in 2022. The Devils are maybe an example of this in terms of what they got done with both Jack Hughes and Echolishier and this window they have

over the next two to three years. But kind of that dynamic, I guess, I want to hear you talk more about in terms of if you're the team side, coming to the player and trying to get them for as many years as you can, acknowledging that it's going to look better and better theoretically as long as they don't get hurt as that contract progresses versus the player's side of, yeah, there's risk involved, certainly, but also you don't want to necessarily strap yourself in

and then every summer watch guys that you think aren't as good as you wind up coming in with higher AABs than you have. Yeah, I think you're on the right track there. And I think that's a trend that holds true across the boards, right? like your listeners who are Canadians and baseball fans are probably closely tracking what's happening with Flagg Guerrero and the Blue Jays and that's sort of a similar narrative of,

hey, here's a team who maybe waited a little too long to pursue a long-term team-friendly or as you put it, surplus value-oriented deal with the player and now they're looking at being part of an auction with 30 other teams and the players may be saying, hey, you know, you could have had me when no one else could at a number that would have helped you, but you waited and I'm going to, hey, go to my own.

market and be, you know, maybe walk in light of that. So that's true. I think no matter what the cap is, you know, teams are going to have the same calculus as they have had in the past, which is to say, let's get the players we know are major contributors locked down long term at numbers that we know will age well. And that's been true for a long time, you know, going back eight, nine years, but we had the same analysis when we were looking at locking up, you know, the Barcoves, Hubbardos, and Ekblads back in the day. And teams are going to have the same calculus today when they're looking at guys, you know, like Conor Bedard and Celebrity and players like that.

I think the more interesting angle is two things. One, I'm curious to see how agents and obviously players more so with that leverage, use it. I don't think we're going to necessarily see, you know, to argue by analogy from a McDavid contract and say, okay, percentage of the cap, eight-year deal. Let's do what Connor did and just plug in the percentages. I think you're going to have players. their camps who are going to say things like, yeah, I'm on a second contract or I'm coming up for a second contract. And sure, the team kind of has CBA leverage in terms of restricted unrestricted years, but I don't care. I want a number right now that reflects my value relative

to other players. And if the team isn't willing to do that with me right now, then, you know, I'm going to maybe use leverage in some other ways or, you know, be less willing to sign the type of deals players in that situation might have in the past. The other piece that's interesting to me, and this was interesting at prior points when salary caps have changed is, you know, we touched on this with around 10 a minute ago, I don't think all cap dollars will be apportioned equally, meaning, you know, if your average third line center is making four right now, I don't think it's a simple or as simple as saying cap goes up 20%, so that player is going to make 4-8 because that's a 20% bump.

I think teams are going to be, you know, very cognizant of looking and saying, you know, where should we be putting those cap dollars? Where's the biggest, you know, bang for our buck? And it may be that, you know, unlike what we saw 10, 20 years ago with big salary cap changes, it may be that the top players are more willing to say, hey, I want, you know, a bigger share of the captain. I've historically got. And teams maybe say, you know, we're willing to do that for certain players.

And, you know, we can talk about it with Rontenden and others as well. but I think it's to be very interesting if you look at sort of stack-racking line-up positions from first-line center down to your fourth-line players or number one to number 60s and goalies and backups, where do those cap dollars get allocated

and usually they're in trends where there's some uniformity across the league of what types of players, what types of position, what aging curve and all that, where those bets and chips get placed and how that shakes out. Well, the rent and part of this,

let's stick with that. that as the theme, especially, I think he's at a unique part of his career, right? Because he'll be 29 in October. And so on the one hand, maximizing earning power for him might actually mean something different than that type of player you're describing that's coming up off their EOSI on a second contract, which just came off a bridge. And has a couple years left in their mid-20s where I think it's more reasonable for them to be like, all right, well, even if I sign a medium-term deal here, I can almost have my

cake and eat it too because I'll still be. relatively near my prime by the time this expires, I'll get more money here on the front of it, and then I'll be able to cash in again with Ranton. While I think it's okay to project him still being highly productive into his early to mid-30s because of his size and skill and the fact that he's already not necessarily a burner, so even once he gets to 34, 35 with his shot and passing ability, he'll still have some sort of at least power play utility, even if everything else goes by the wayside, he'll want to cash in here because realistically if he signed a medium-term

deal, and that's obviously not even on the table because he will get at least seven or eight years. But theoretically speaking, that removes one of the options because his bargaining power, I guess, would look and the market for him would look wildly different in four or five years than it would for another player. And so if you were his agent and you were consulting him and you were trying to maximize that earning power and really cash in right here, I know you wrote about this. on on puckpedia.

And so I'm kind of trying to segue us into that. But I think you had a really interesting sort of idea, I guess, for what he could do. One that might be a bit too exotic for the NHL because we haven't really seen a star player of this caliber do that. But I think would allow him to really fully cash in on this as he enters the UFA market. Yeah. So that idea with a caveat that it's probably more aspirational fun to talk about to play out, although I wouldn't say it's completely unlikely, is the idea that if you have a player who's becoming an unrestricted free agent,

who's really a unicorn type of player, who everyone's going to want and everyone's going to want to pay at or near top dollar for, the idea to your point is you don't want to become a UFA looking for your biggest paycheck or biggest long-term contract when you're in your 30s. You want it to be as early as 25, which would be the youngest, with seven years after age 18 under the CBA, but certainly, you know, at the latest 27, 28 years old where Rontenon is.

And so the idea I threw out was, could Rontenon pursue a one-year deal this offseason at way above what he would make per year on an eight-year deal because of the cap ramifications? And so that would mean anything from, if we say he's realistically likely to, you know, signed for a floor of about 11 to 12. well, the CBA Max in the summer is going to be 19.

So, you know, I threw out a couple teams, but let's use Chicago as an example because we can weave in what we talk about Bedard here. So, you know, Kyle Davidson's built a roster this season with a lot of, you know, veteran players who are coming off the books, and that's strategic. And he's stockpile draft picks,

and he has Connor Bedard, who's obviously the centerpiece of that team. So the scenario would be, you know, would Chicago say to Rontonin, here's a one-year deal for 25, 26, at or near the season, be a max. So let's just use the max and say it's $19 million. And that would get him at least interested, maybe not signed, but it might get him signed. And the idea would be, and it wouldn't

be promised and it wouldn't be guaranteed. And Chicago would, you know, frame this very simply as we wanted to sign Miko. Miko hasn't played here or lived here before. And so we wanted to entice him to come here now. And we want to show off our best to him and then allow him to commit to a long-term deal if and when he wants to. But the idea would be you sign him to a massive one-year deal. You get him into Chicago. You pull out all the stops. You know, you have MJ and everyone else court him.

And then as soon as you're allowed to negotiate a longer term deal, which would be next year's trade deadline, you then offer him an eight-year deal at, you know, market value, whatever that may be. And, you know, some of the feedback I got to that proposal was, wait, wait, wait, no team's going to be able to absorb a $19 million one-year cap. It would triple them cap-wise, which I wholeheartedly. agree with because if you take Connor Bedard, Bedard signed for one more year on this entry level deal at a million dollars and let's set aside the entry level bonuses which he's likely to be close

to earning, which might make a cap it at the end of the day closer to three, but let's leave it at one for now. So you're looking at next season where you'd have Bedard and Rotin and combined for close to, you know, let's say 19 or 20 million dollars, which dividing by two is an average of 10. That's pretty

normal for those two guys to have them for one year at an average of 10 each. And you can build a decent team in year one. And you can build a much better team once you sign Ronton and hopefully long term after that. So the idea would be, A, a team entices him with that one year contract and then works as hard as they can to sign him to an eight-year deal. And from Ronton's perspective, he says, you know, rather than working backwards and say,

I'm going to sign an eight-year deal now. And if I want to play one year after that, I'll be 36 and 37. And like you said, he's probably going to be looking at a far lower salary given how his performance might be a little different at 37 than 27. Instead, he says, I'm going to do a one-year deal. I'm going to capitalize on my earning power this summer. And then when I'm still at or near my prime at, you know, 28, 29, I'm then going to sign a massive eight-year extension,

which will allow me to have nine big earning power years relative to age. So that was the idea. You know, the other jumping off point was there's typically a lot of talk that the team that has a player has the maximum leverage because only they can offer the eighth year under the CBA right now. And I think that's a little overblown. I talked about that a little in the piece, but one main reason is what we saw with Matt Kachuk

is, you know, if a player isn't signed near the summer, he can always say the team he's with, you know, if you sign me and trade me and give me that eighth year, the team who I'm going to will pay you a lot more. So that was the other piece to that puzzle. At the end of the day, listen, Frantino loves Carolina, and he likely will, you know, easy living, great coach.

He's got Sebastian Ajo on the team. They're perennially successful. The taxes aren't so bad. he'll probably sign there, but if he's looking to do something else, you know, maybe these things come into play. And like you said, it's a little more common in some of the other big sports. I guess one of the roadblocks for a team like Chicago to do that, and might not necessarily be one for them considering the size of the market

and at least theoretically how deep the pockets are of the organization, it would be the payout itself, right? And I think is an interesting part of this as well, spinning it forward to the rising cap. And you're talking about sort of the playing field, not only from the player perspective of how that extra money is going to be divvied out, but also the fact that we've already heard that teams are sort of posturing about whether there's going to be an appetite to fully spend up to the cap ceiling,

especially once it gets into the 110 plus range in a couple years. And so for some of these teams, the idea of paying out not only a $19 million salary for one year to one player, but also a maximum amount of that tied up in signing bonus is in terms of a one-time payment on July 1st, it might be a difficult sell, I guess, for a GM to make to their owner. Yeah, I mean, I think historically we've seen that teams don't cooperate that well together and they ultimately spend out or near the cap and, you know, fight against each other for players that there's a bit of a different trend sometimes in baseball with certain vintages of

free agents. But, you know, again, looking at baseball, which granted is massively different than hockey, but you look at, you know, contract like Shohei Otani goes to the Dodgers and the Dodgers, sell out easily and all their rights go up exponentially and their international synergies with whatever partners they work with become transformed by having that players. So there's certainly like super positive externalities to having a rotten income in, especially to a team like Chicago that was great and has fans that expect greatness

and is in a bit of a trough and has a player in Bedard who might say, listen, I'm not willing to be part of a seven-year rebuild. need a bit more light at the end of the tunnel. But your point's well taken. It'll be curious to see, you know, with the change in, you know, the Canadian dollar and some other factors, you know, how much and how quickly every team is willing to ramp up their spending. And again, back to baseball, there's certainly MLB teams that said, you know,

like, nah, man, we're cool. We know the caps up, but we're just going to, you know, take our league-wide revenue and build slowly and extend our rebuild. So it's no certainty. And I think you're right. We're not just going to see a ceiling of 100-mill, but we are going to see every team have to at least, you know, commit to the floor.

And for some teams, you know, they're far from it right now. They might be more willing to make some big ticket bets. Well, hearing you talk about it from the Blackhawks perspective, I was thinking a lot about the Utah Hockey Club, right? Because I think they're at an interesting spot here where, you know, they're kind of hovering around the playoffs right now, regardless. This certainly won't be their year,

but they're in this new market. They have a new owner in Ryan Smith. The rising cap and the fact that their books look the way they do, right now, based on all the years they were in Arizona, it provides a bit of an organic entryway into the market as a buyer for them, right? And you just look ahead to their cap commitments next year. By my account, they've got about $58 million tied up in eight forwards, five defensemen and a goalie.

It's going to be the final year of Logan Cooley's ELC. Then after that, Nick Schmaltz, who's their third highest paid forward right now, would be coming off the books. You know, Shea Weber's contract, which hamstrings a little bit in terms of like dipping into the LTIR. for example, would be off the books as well. They have this young core, but also a bunch of high draft picks that are presumably going to be coming into the NHL playing on ELCs over the next couple years. So if there's a team to keep an eye on here for this particular example, but maybe even beyond Ranton,

it feels like it would be Utah just in terms of the willingness to be to do it being there, but also the fact that they actually have so much, I guess, flexibility to actually capitalize and take advantage of it. Yeah, I think Utah is a perfect storm candidate to go after Bronten as well for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. And also just because some of these other trends we've seen, if you look at, you know, I know they're not an expansion team, but you look at the Vegas model Vegas had some real high value draft picks, you know, arguably early on in their life cycle, including players like Nick Suzuki. And they move those players for, you know, high-end peak performing guys like Mark Stone or Max Patcheretti or more recently Jack Eichol. And so there may be a lot of.

a greater willingness of a team like that to make deals like when to acquire or sign Rontinin and you know just looking at atmospheric. You have Ryan Smith who owns multiple teams and is a Utah guy and owns that Utah club and recently sold his business for I think $8 or $9 billion. So he's not going to be scared away to your point

about the actual dollars or any signing bonus. In a contract, yeah, you can't think of a better sort of splash. Sort of like the Jets and the WHAs, bringing in Bobby Hull then a team like Utah to say, hey, we're big players now. We have that legacy. You know, not to make the way to acknowledge you again,

but coming from Phoenix of a team that, you know, has been in the doldrums for quite some time and sort of breaking loose from all that. I think it's a real symbolic move if they could bring in a player of Ranton's quality and from Rontin's perspective, you know, maybe it's a nice sort of heel turn, so to speak for him to be, you know,

back in Colorado's division and playing those guys on a regular basis as part of a good. good team that's, you know, already good right now, but could maybe make a big leap with a guy like him, like you said, playing alongside the coolies and the schmaltzes and the Gunther's and those guys. Yeah, four to five potential meetings every year on the calendar would be highly spicy. So that'd be a really interesting one. All right, Steve, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll finish up with you. I got a few other things kind of along these lines that I want to get into. And we're going to mix in a couple of questions that we have from the

PDOCast, Discord mailbag from our listeners as well. You're listening to the hockey Hikpdiocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Hey, it's Bick Nazar. Have your say and join me on the People's Show with big takes and even bigger bets. Weekdays 3 to 4 on Sportsnet 650 or wherever you get to podcasts. All right, we're back here on the HockeyPedioCast joined by Steve Wareer. Steve, before we went to break, we were talking about Miko Rantonin and his upcoming contract and the structuring of that. all that stuff, all the various considerations.

We talked a little bit about it from Carolina's perspective, certainly, in terms of, I think the timing of it is interesting, right? Because it's been a while now we've had a chance to marinate, soak it up. It's not necessarily new, but just in thinking about it, sort of the timing and the particulars of this in terms of the teams pulling the trigger on it about seven weeks before the deadline. I think partly to the reason why it was sped up is to a lot, because it was such a big adjustment for everyone involved to like allow for that acclamation period before. as soon as you could, but also I think considering all the uncertainty involved, I think,

creates additional opportunities to pivot or to make a, you know, following moves for both sides. So I don't know, do you have any other stuff on, on this particular transaction or kind of the logistics behind it? Or do you want to get into some of the mailback questions? Yeah, I think the only interesting angle from this point forward is, you know, that's got a butt about whether or not Carolina would consider at least to move Ranton in. you know, adder prior to the deadline, and it sounds crazy because they're a great team and he's a great player

and he only compounds their odds of winning the cup this year. You know, I think it's remote, but not impossible. You know, contrary, maybe the conventional wisdom solely because, like,

this is a management group that will think long term and they've been willing to make bold moves like they did with Genssel as recently as last year. But, you know, I do think if someone came to them, and Carolina had the sense

Rantan was not resigning Carolina beyond this year, which is an if, we don't know that yet, but if a team came to them and offered them a really good young player who was signed long term or was cost controlled, I think they think long and hard about that and they might do an analysis that simply says

like, you know, we're going to have that young player for five more years. He's massively useful and valuable. We're going to be way ahead in years 5, 4, 3, and 2. And, you know, in year 1, we're going to be a little bit further back because that player might not be everything Rottenen is right now,

but better to have that massive advantage for four more years where we'll still likely be in our highly competitive window. And that team's, you know, perennially near the top of the standings in regular season. So I think they might think that way. And it's sort of how, you know, Vancouver probably and others might have thought

about a contract like J.T. Miller's where, you know, you trade a player like J.T. Miller, a hundred point winger, that's not going to help you this year. It's not going to help you next year. It might not help you. three years down the line. But he's signed seven years at $8 million. And if he worked backwards from 2030,

you know, it probably helps them a lot. And it probably helps them a lot in 2020, too. So interesting to see how that one plays out. And hearing you talk about that, I was thinking, you know, the way he's played recently, he's probably taking himself off the market. I don't think they could get a player of this caliber. But I wonder if the hurricanes could get a guy like Marty Natchez,

if they decided to go that route. it's interesting you bring out the Canucks. I had this thought and, you know, chatting with people behind the scenes about and balancing our ideas. And it's not something that we typically talk about in an HL circles, certainly do it much more in the NBA. And I think that's understandable considering I think everyone agrees that, you know, one especially superstar player if you're in a certain caliber or tier can have such an

outsized impact on the organization, you just being there. and especially committing to being there long term can essentially dictate that you're just going to consistently and perennially be at least a playoff team, but likely a contender and having a chance to win a championship every season and the value of that for an organization. It's not really like that in the NHL. I don't think we typically hear a lot about organizations collaborating

with their star players, running ideas by them, allowing them to vet it or essentially sign off on certain deals. But I do feel like when you bring up the Canucks, I was thinking about sort of this level that Quinn Hughes has taken his game to and what an importance he has to the Canucks organization moving forward with two more years on his contract after this one, especially at the salary he's on. And the fact that he's going to be hitting that free agency in the summer of 2027, that's when that cap is going to be going up to 113.5.

And how essentially the only things that matter for the Canucks lost in all of this J.T. Miller, Elias Peders and stuff is like the only timeline that really matter. is the Quinn Hughes one, right? And so him just almost reaching this very rarefied air in NHL circles of being a rare exception of a player that you actually would treat almost like an NBA player in terms of running some of this stuff by him and making sure he's cool with whatever direction you decide

to take your organization into from a personnel perspective. I think that's an interesting one. You got any thoughts on that as it applies to either Hughes-Kanucks or just in general as sort of a direction we might be heading in as the NHL sort of emulates other leagues more and more so in terms of this financial landscape it's heading into? Yeah, I think first of all, that kind of stuff happens a little more than you might have implied in the NHL already.

I think, you know, and probably for the betterment of the clubs in question. But, you know, I think Pittsburgh probably makes sure that their staff and personnel are well-suited to Sidney Crosby. And, you know, he's great in his own right. but, you know, Connor McDavid plays now for a coach who coached him in junior and a general manager who was his agent prior to most recently joining the club. So, you know, there's certainly, you know, not necessarily causation reasoning, but certainly like good additional reasons for some moves we see around the league for those,

you know, upper upper echelon type guys. And, you know, I don't think it would be, I don't think it would be, I don't think. he would be wrong. If Vancouver said, hey, listen, we, you know, as of right now, let's just, like, let's set table stakes here and say Vancouver doesn't know with 100% certainty yet what Quinn Hughes will do in 2027, you know, even if there might be an ink thing that he might go to Team X, you know, teams change wildly over two seasons, players move, coaches move, so you never know.

So as of right now, let's assume, you know, there's uncertainty. They don't know what it'll do and they can't enter those conversations formally, at least until the end of next season. So, you know, if you deal with that assumption, you know, probably around the league. I know he's run the Norris, but still doesn't get as much credit for what he is. So, you know, let's just use by analogy,

like you're talking essentially about someone who is as close as possible in recent years to, like, prime Bobby Orr, like that caliber of player, like absolutely transforms the club. And this is a team that's looking at over the next couple of years, at least right now. like most teams, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty.

There's uncertainty around Miller. There's uncertainty right now for a number of reasons about Pedersen. There's uncertainty, you know, somewhat lesser extent, around Besser, you know, around the coach. You know, it's unclear necessarily that far down the road, you know, the faces in management and so on, just like any other team. That's not specific to Vancouver. But if you're looking ahead and you have a guy like Quinn Hughes, I don't think it's foolish to say, let's do everything we can to make sure we can make ourselves be in the absolute best possible position to attract Quinn Hughes back to our team in 2027.

And let's treat Twin Hughes a little bit differently than we treat whoever further down the roster. Now, there's obviously some cultural considerations there. You do not necessarily want to create that dynamic where you don't have to, where a player has, you know, not special treatment, but clearly extreme focus from ownership and management and others to entice. and you've sort of seen in recent years, players at teams who maybe, you know, created a dynamic from getting sort of most favored nations treatment. But Hughes is unique. And everyone in that room knows he's unique. And they all know us to their benefit to keep them around.

So, yeah, I absolutely think Vancouver should be. And I'm sure they are already pulling out all the stops to make sure they can retrain and attract him because he is a, you know, he's a transformational player. And if he goes somewhere else in free agency, the ability to replace. them as great as, you know, they've made some really smart moves recently with locking up Marcus Pedersen and drafting some really good young defensemen like Pedersen and other Pedersen and Wheelender and so on and bring in Philipronic. But, you know, there's only one Quinn Hughes. And so, yeah, I'm with you. I think if they go the model and over index on, let's do too much to keep them around, they'll regret that less in hindsight than not doing enough.

there's only one Quinn Hughes on the ice in terms of his impact. There's also, I feel like only one Quinn Hughes in terms of what an aberration he is compared to a lot of other NHL players and stars in terms of off the ice as well purely from like if you're framing the conversation like this of like collaborating with someone or getting their opinion on certain moves from my understanding like he's so dialed in on what's going on around the league. But like in terms of like knowing everyone's contracts like tracking everything. I know there's a lot of players who kind of just like just like. like go to the rink, do their job, watch tape of like their own team or preparation if you're in a playoff series, but aren't necessarily keeping the closest tabs on what's going on on the rest of the league. And that is certainly not him. So just in terms of a player potentially warranting that sort of a relationship, I feel like

he checks a lot of boxes. So it's really interesting. All right. I got a question here for you from the PDO cast Discord. They ask, how much stock is placed on the perceived strength of a draft class when determining the value of picks in a deadline deal? Do GMs generally consult their scouts to see what they think of a class before finalizing a deal involving first round picks? Now, this is a relevant question, any trade deadline, but I feel like especially this one, because we've already seen the justification for a couple deals involving first as well.

The team doesn't value this first round pick because it's perceived to be a relatively weak class. And so that first round pick isn't as valuable to them as it might otherwise be. And so that's why they were comfortable moving it in this deal. I imagine we're going to hear a lot more of that between now and the March 7th deadline. You have any thoughts on sort of this part of the equation in terms of how you value those picks, how you communicate within the organization about it, and whether this is a real thing, or do you think it's something that's just being kind of used to justify it after the fact

by the organizations who now all of a sudden don't have their first round pick anymore? Right. Like what's the old saying to a man with a hammer and everything looks like a nail? Like scouts want more picks. Let's start with that. You know, scouts make their living on making great draft picks. And, you know, a good scout is always going to say in any year that there are players to be found and they know who those players are. And some of those scouts are dead right.

So I don't think you will typically find, you know, your amateur scouting group saying, no, no, don't trade us picks this year. We're good. That would be rare. You know, but that's not the real question here. The real question is, is there a variance among draft years and do teams, you know, prioritize picks differently? I think the answer is less than you'd think with the caveat that, you know, in the first round and the high portions of the first round, it's absolutely a consideration. If you're talking, you know, top 10 picks, top five picks, then absolutely, you know, completely those conversations are driven by the specific players available as opposed to just sort of the generic draft picks. But those conversations are more rare where you see a deadline deal for a, you know, lottery unprotected high pick.

And I think the narrative there is generally a little off anyway, right? Like the discussion of what's a good draft year is so heavily skewed, at least I've found over the years based on A, like who are the biggest names on the board? So if the big two or three guys are marquee, then it's like a good draft year, even though that's just three of two or three hundred names. Whereas if they aren't, then it's like, oh, this draft year isn't great when it, you know, there might be a lot of sort of mid-tier or, you know, upper mid-tier prospects who are just, as good, you know, on paper, the eye test specifically as any other year. So I think, you know, when you're talking about the typical currency of deadline deals, which tend to be picks at the end of the first round and later, I don't think the year-to-year variance is that impactful.

You know, I think it might come into play a little bit, but I think, you know, you see a lot of scouts, and I've certainly seen over the years who will say, you know, regardless of rankings and expectations. There's, you know, these players overseas more often than domestically, but you know, you know, I got these guys in Finland in Sweden who are, you know, way better than people are prognosticating. And I've certainly seen that in years where, you know, we were

putting together a preliminary draft table. And then, you know, one of our scouts comes in and says, you know, one year it was, it was Reese Jessup, who's now with Carolina, who joined us midway in the season, and said, hey, there's a guy in your draft board who I'm following in Sweden named Esper Brat. And I think he should be way up on the board. you know, you're always going to have scouts who have those sort of guys,

their guys. And again, yeah. So short answer is less than you would think. And, you know, scouts and managers are going to be inclined to want picks in any draft class, I think. I'm with you. And I'm glad you brought that up. It bugs me.

It's a bit of a pet peeve when that gets parroted this time of year. I think especially with those picks you mentioned where it's like in the 25 to potentially even 32 range. The fact that it's described as a weak draft. graph class is pretty much entirely based on or hinging on the top three to five picks or maybe even the top one to two. And so in this case, it's like the 26th overall pick this year compared to what's considered and deemed a strong draft class.

I don't feel any more confident that that's going to be a good or a bad player down the road. And so I don't really think it's influenced by that at all. So I think that's an important thing to remember when you see some of these deals and then a lot of the analysis after it stemming after being like, all right, well, that pick's not worth anything. I just, I'm not really sure that's the case. Yeah, the other thing worth of throwing out here is

that your list is my friend is interesting. If you make your own draft board at a club, you throw out that range of like picks 25 to 32 or so on, you know, year over a year, if a team has a player on their own board ranked like around 25, they can typically get that player around pick 40 because there's that much variance across team to team draft boards. And so as unexciting as it might sound to be like,

oh, we got, you know, a mid-second round pick. You know, a scout for that team is typically looking at this and saying, well, I'm going to get like a guy in my top 25 at pick 40. And so it can be a lot more exciting to the club than it, you know, might appear to the eye. Good point. All right. We got time for one more question. Question goes, how long in the making our deadline deals?

GMs often like to say, quote-unquote, we've been discussing this deal for a few weeks now, but is that typical? I imagine there has to be some pivoting if a target has moved elsewhere. So how does that go? Are there contingencies? Have you ever run out of time on a deal that would have gotten done otherwise if the deadline was a little bit later? Now, kind of ties into a conversation we had about ranting and the timing of it and some of these trades happening maybe a couple weeks in advance of when they typically would. I'm curious for your thoughts on how that sort of influences the market, whether sometimes there's a bit of gridlock in terms of a lot of contenders having similar targets.

And all of a sudden, if that guy goes on the board, how that changes your decision making, You got any interesting anecdotes or stories relating to that? You know, I think the short answer is there's a lot of runway to big deals. There's not a lot of surprises way before the deadline. Typically on what teams are going to be buying and which you're going to be selling. I sort of laugh when you hear the quotes invariably after any trade where a manager always says, you know, we liked them for quite some time and we got them now. You rarely hear a team say, yeah, you know, we didn't know about this player until.

a couple weeks ago, but now we're really excited we have them. But, you know, teams make their, you know, they rank every player around the league at their annual scouting meetings in the off season prior to the deadline. And, you know, good managers are having constant conversations on players. And then to your point about, like, sort of a glut waiting for a shoe to drop, you know, that can go two ways. You know, it's certainly when there's a big name, you know,

waiting for that one guy to hit the market, whoever that may be, some teams are reluctant to make a move, because they might try to get that player or B, they might be saying, hey, let's see, you know, sort of how the market gets set. Because if we want player X over there, everyone agrees player X isn't me charentin. And so, you know, we'll be able to pay whatever, you know, reduced amount sort of reflective of that and so on. But it can go both ways. And there's a lot of advantages to sort of moving super early and making a trade and sort of getting a deal you like at a price you are okay with, whether or not it, you know, accurately reflects the market down the line rather than waiting and sort of, having a guy, you know, either go or end up getting bid up higher than you think.

And drawing a blank on specific examples, but certainly a bit on the phones, you know, with whatever the 3 o'clock Eastern deadline or whatever it is, 12 o'clock, you know, coming up and being on a phone saying, oh, man, like this player didn't get moved. And, you know, this team wants to move them right away. Let's offer something quick. And there's a bit of a fallacy there in those scenarios where, you know, you might be tempted to say, okay, you know, this selling team has a guy on the market at the last minute because something else fell through. Let's just lowball them.

That doesn't work as often as you might think. Certainly there's a managerial approach where a lot of GMs say, you know what, I need fair value for this player, even if I'm going to lose them for nothing on a losing team, because I want to hold to a very clear, you know, negotiating position for future years that, you know, I don't get ripped off in deals like that. And if you want to make a deal with me, you got to make a fair offer. So just because a player or a proposal comes to you, you know, at the last minute or the last hour,

it doesn't necessarily mean it's as simple as saying, you know, hey, I'm the last guy at the dance. I'll take you or you're out of luck. There's still a lot of considerations in all those deals and the more time you have to sort of plan and get your ducks in a row with everyone, you know, helps get those deals done. What about we got actually time for one more question.

Had one that I thought was interesting about the concept of potentially like showcasing players leading up to the deadline to put them at a position. and succeed, of course, pump up their value, maybe generate more interest towards the deadline. In a lot of cases, I feel like that certainly happens because it's mutually beneficial, right? You take what happened with Michael Granlin, for example, in San Jose, and it's like they bring him in the Carlson trade as a bit of a reclamation project because of the state of the team and the lack of talents around him. He's playing top power play, top five on five. He's average.

I think he was a top 10 forward in terms of all situations, minutes over the past two years. years. And so you're going to accumulate a bunch of points along the way and look good. And so it benefits the player. And then it also benefits the organization because they wind up being able to get a first round pick like they did from the stars. So it doesn't necessarily always line up that way. But I do feel like that probably is a legitimate consideration, especially if you're a bottom team without many great alternatives. Yeah, I think that's right. Like listen, if you're San Jose and you're sort of far down the competitive curve and clearly on a rebuilding path, you're not going to run into too much internal friction with a plan like that to showcase a player like Granland.

And quite frankly, he's either in that placement, given how he performed there, it's obviously tougher even if you're, you know, grasping for a playoff spot or even if you're not, you know, a coach wants to win games. They're coaching for their own legacy and their own win-loss record, whether it's at this job or the next one. And so they're going to want ice, you know, the best roster they can. But to the extent there's a collaborative sort of environment of let's sort of try to win within reason, but also maximize our future assets.

I think that's a right move. You know, looking at Pittsburgh, and I don't know if that's the case, but you've got Ricardo Raquel playing with Sidney Crosby on the first power play and having an amazing season. And, you know, if they wanted to move him, that would certainly help. And, you know, I know back in the day, if we were looking to sort of give any winger on our club a head start, it certainly didn't help to throw him on Sasha Barkov's wing for a few games.

And all of a sudden it's like, wow, the guy has 90% possession numbers. He must be playing great. It's like, yeah, it might be something else going on there too. So yeah, that happens, but it's got to be under the right facts and circumstances to make it work for sure. Well, I think to put this full circle and bring us back to what we were talking about off the top, I'd argue that kind of happened to an extent with the hurricanes and Martin H's, which ultimately opened the door for and facilitated the deal they made for Miko Rankin. Now it's not like they were necessarily putting them in these prime time spots in the lineup in terms of who he was playing with, especially at even strength. But I think the timing of it worked for them perfectly, right? because it seemed like at some point around the draft last year,

they weren't going to be able to come to terms on a reasonable long-term deal. And so they might just move him just to kind of end his saga for what likely would have been some amount of pennies on the dollar in any trade they made. And instead, they signed the two-year bridge. He comes in. He's motivated. He could, on the perfectly timed heater, right, where he was leading the league and scoring in early December.

And I feel like that essentially paved the way for, something like this to happen. Obviously, he was a valued player around league circles regardless before, but I feel like the optics and the timing of it worked out perfectly for them. So it wasn't necessarily by design, but I feel like buying themselves that runway to allow something like this to happen was a nice piece of business by them. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a two-part statement, and I totally agree with the first part, which is that the right move was to maximize the asset value by extending him for a couple more years and giving the team that runway to monetize him at the right time.

You know, I think that team with where they are in the standings and then with Rob Rindamore, they probably played him where they thought gave the team the best chance to win, but the luxury of, you know, extending a player

like Marty Nietzsche says you can showcase him at the top of the lineup because he, you know, more often than not, deserves to be around there. So, yeah, I think that was a good piece of business by them

and it opened up some pretty interesting doors. All right, Steve, we, that's all the time we have for today. We're going to get out of here. It's always a blast having you all.

on and getting into some of this stuff with you and getting it from your advantage point. Generally, when I have guests on, I let them plug stuff. You have nothing to plug, though, as far as I know. So I'm not going to give you the chance to do so. I'm going to do a couple plugs for myself, though, to sign us out here. Everyone, please drop the five-star rating, wherever you listen to the show, get into the PDOCast Discord as well. It took a couple questions here from the listeners today.

We'll continue to do so moving forward. And that's all the time we have for today. So thank you to Steve for coming on and thank you to you as a listener for listening to the Hockey PDO cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.