Eichel and the Sabres are mad
NHL Watcher: Elliotte Friedman on his 31 Thoughts Podcast: “Eichel’s mad, but I think the Sabres are mad too and Eichel wants to push them and push them, but the Sabres are like, you can’t push us, we have a line in terms of what we’re getting and we’re determined to get it.”
NHL Watcher: “I think if Adams and the Sabres felt pressure, he’d (Eichel) be traded already.”
It’s a process for the Canucks, Pettersson and Hughes
Patrick Johnston: Last week the agent, Pat Brisson, said that restricted free agents Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes would sign a deal ‘today’ but added: “sometimes these things take time.”
Brisson added that they know how important Pettersson and Hughes are to the Canucks and that there is no hold up right now.
“It’s a process. It’s Aug. 12. If there were a deadline tomorrow, I’m sure we would be talking 10 hours a day,” he said. “So I don’t get too emotional with it. I go with the process.
“You look around, a lot of these deals are done during camp,” Brisson added. (Brock Boeser’s contract in 2019 wasn’t signed until the end of training camp.) “But this isn’t our goal; our goal is to get it done. There’s no animosity.”
Brisson said that they are open to both short- or long-term deals and the longer you go, the higher the AAV.
If you add Micheal Ferland‘s cap hit to the LTIR, the Canucks will have closer $16 million in projected cap space.
Pettersson is four years away from being a UFA, and Hughes is five.
Comparables for Hughes are Cale Makar (six years at $9 million per), Miro Heiskanen (eight years at $8.45 million per) and Charlie McAvoy (three years at $4.9 million per).
Comparable for Pettersson are Mathew Barzal (three years at $7 million per) and Brayden Point‘s 2019 deal (three years at $6.75 million per).