Turning down $77 million
Bleacher Report: Frank Seravalli on Logan Cooley turning down a eight-year, $77 million contact offer from the Utah Mammoth.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
“Sources indicated that Logan Cooley and the Utah Mammoth, the Mammoth had made a huge push to get Cooley under contract, an extension before the start of the regular season. It does not appear that that’s going to happen, although never say never.
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But the Cooley camp, sources indicated, turned down an extension offer of eight years times $9.6 million a year. So yes, saying no to nearly $77 million. Take a deep breath, because it’s hard to say no when someone puts $77 million guaranteed in front of you before a season starts, and then you go to shoulder all that risk.
But what this is an indication of is how rapidly the NHL salary cap landscape is changing here. With the increase in the cap, it’s exploding. That’s just what’s in front of us over these next two to three years. It’s going to go like a rocket ship if NHL revenue continues to climb and climb.
Where would that leave a player like Cooley signing for with one year left on his deal, nine years under contract, it basically takes him until he’s 30 years old. And yes, he will get another kick at the can, but is that the proper deal to sign on a cap that, in relatively short order, could be $135, 140 million, and he’s a budding superstar in the NHL? I understand the reason to pause and say, that probably doesn’t make sense in this environment. Let’s get to a better number than that, that three years, four years in, we’re not sitting back going, this is one of the most underpaid players in the NHL.
I think that’s a position you want to try and avoid. But again, I admire his courage of conviction, and his camp’s courage of conviction to say no to 77 million. It’s in front of you. All you have to do is, well, now the NHL moved to DocuSign. You can DocuSign your way to 77 million bucks and structure it the way you want to do it. That’s tough to turn down.
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And so we’ll see where it goes. I think the Mammoth have a real clear idea of what it’s going to take to get a deal done from the Cooley camp. I think they’ve had a pretty sizable gulf in between them, and I’m not holding my breath to have that done before the season starts.
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