Daily Faceoff: Frank Seravalli on Patrick Kane on who they might be thinking and what type of deal he could be looking for. Would he consider someone longer than one year?
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Seravalli: “They haven’t narrowed down the list just yet. But I think they’re hoping to get to three to four teams by sometime next week. And so there’s a bunch of teams that have been out there that have wanted to get in the mix. We’ll see if they actually end up being included in the list.
But I don’t think it actually strays if we’re handicapping it from afar, very far from the list that we gave you, I don’t know a month ago six weeks ago when we listed the New York Rangers, the Buffalo Sabres, and the Detroit Red Wings.
Now, here’s the one thing that I think is most fascinating when it comes to Patrick Kane and he determines his future is, the thing that they’re talking about internally right now is, do we take some security and it’s not the money, It’s do we take a bigger deal a two-, three-year deal, a multi-year deal somewhere?
And kind of go with the idea of this as a team on the rise? And we can stay here for a bit, maybe even finish my career here, or do you take a short-term, short money deal based on what these teams can offer? Like a team like the New York Rangers and go for a one-year, $1 million type of deal on a team that has an authentic chance to win the Stanley Cup this year?
So that’s internally what the wrestle is potentially going to be and something that they have to consider. I think Buffalo is really uniquely positioned to be able to do that. They’ve got the cap space, you know, more than $6 million in cap space right now. They’ve got the long-term view with all of their guys kind of already locked up to be able to say, hey, we can afford to slide Patrick Kane, like just hypothetic, five million bucks a year for three years. And does that entice him to come home and be the guy that helps put this team over the top and make the playoffs?
I think internally there’s probably a bit of Patrick Kane, that feels like he disappointed New York last year and is you know, would like to see what that looks like. So I think all those teams kind of remained squarely you know in the mix.