On the Arizona Coyotes, Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues …
Craig Morgan of Arizona Sports: The Coyotes are still looking for a top-four, right handed defenseman. They’ve talked to the Jets about Jacob Trouba and the Blues about Kevin Shattenkirk. It appears the Jets are willing to play hardball with Trouba.
The asking price for Shattenkirk is still too high for the Coyotes, and it makes sense for the Blues to ask a lot. Can’t see the Blues being able to keep Shattenkirk beyond this season. The Blues have Alex Petrangelo and Colton Parayko on the right side. They can’t afford to lose him for nothing, nor wait until the trade deadline to move him when is trade value will be lower.
On the CBA and a potential lockout …
Chris Nichols of Today’s Slapshot: Bob McKenzie on SiriusXM was asked about if teams/GMs are concerned about being tight against the salary and what it will be like in future years when more long-term contracts are added.
McKenzie said that teams doing long-term deals like Rickard Rakell’s to keep their costs affordable, but if the salary cap goes up slowly, they will have problems in the future. A few years ago the cap ceiling was projected up to $100, but the Canadian dollar tanked.
“I will tell you where it’s leading. In my mind, it’s potentially leading to another lockout in 2020. And I would say that one of the big labor issues potentially, if the NHL were to opt out of the CBA in the fall of ’19 with a year’s notice to have the CBA expire in the fall of 2020, would be contract (lengths). So you wouldn’t be able to do six, seven, eight year deals. You’d only be able to do a five-year deal. So I think that’s probably something that might be on the agenda.
“And hey, listen. If I’m a player in the National Hockey League and my escrow – to your point – you keep on filling up the pot with more player expenses, but there’s a specified number that you can only get. That escrow number keeps going up and up and up – 15, 16, 17 percent. Where’s this going to end? If I were the players, I’d be in the position where I’d say, ‘You know what? You guys like the salary cap so much. How about we cap escrow?’”