Anaheim Ducks Can Be Aggressive Moving Forward
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Morning Skate segment with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick and was asked what the Frank Vatrano contract means for the Anaheim Ducks moving forward.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Scott Laughlin: “(Sunday) we had the announcement from Frank Vatrano, who had his little one sitting in his lap and talked about the extension he’d signed with the Ducks. Could have become an unrestricted free agent coming up in the summertime, but he does not hit the market. Goes out and celebrates with three points against the (Tampa Bay) Lightning in the victory last night (Sunday Night) at Honda Center. So it’s three years, $18 million to re-up with the Ducks for Frankie Vatrano.
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We saw him at the All-Star Weekend in Toronto, of course, and he’s up amongst the best in the league. His contract is going to have an average annual value of $4.57 million. It’s going to pay Frankie Vatrano $3 million in each of the next three seasons. The remaining 9 million will be coming in deferred salary beginning in 2035. So it’s not exactly Bobby Bonilla with the Mets or Shohei Ohtani with the Dodgers, but this is a rather interesting deal that the Ducks got done and how it got constructed to get something with Frank the Tank.”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah. There is definitely some creativity on both parties and a willingness of the player to wait as long as he will to get the balance of that contract after the fact. As you said, starting in 2035 we get $900,000 a year for 10 years, so half of that contract gets paid out afterwards. There are a variety of different benefits kind of tied to it, a little bit of risk as well, depending on the overall numbers, inflation, all that fun stuff that kind of gets added into the mix. But it doesn’t work unless the player, and in this case, Frank Vatrano, is willing to wait things out and to be in a position to not collect money now, versus waiting the 10 years.
But because of that willingness to do so, and it puts Anaheim in a position where the cap hit is less. They get to spread things out. And it kind of reading what well between the lines, but also what Pat Verbeek their GM has indicated they expect to start taking, their rebuild into the next phase, which is going to allow them to spend a little bit more. You would anticipate that Anaheim is going to be a little bit more aggressive.
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More aggressive in terms of not just the free agent market, but also some of the way that they handle their trades and bringing additional players and going and moving into the next phase of this rebuild process, which is okay now it’s time to insulate players even further. They’ve added some veterans along the way, but now it’s time to insulate the rest of this roster and start taking the playoffs into account, moving forward here.
And if you’re a Ducks fan, that’s what you want to see. They spent some time as part of this rebuild, they’ve been near the bottom for a while. They’ve collected some really good players through through the draft, and now it’s the next evolution of that. So to have this contract in place again, a willingness on the players side to wait as long as he will to get the rest of the contract. But it gives Anaheim a little bit of additional flexibility over these next three seasons, starting next season, to be a little bit more aggressive when it comes to adding to the roster and more aggressive in terms of how they’re going to utilize their dollars.”
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