The Anaheim Ducks and Mason McTavish are okay with long-term, but significantly apart on money
Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – The Last Dance in LA episode, on Mason McTavish’s contract situation with the Anaheim Ducks.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Friedman: “All right. Well, let’s start with McTavish, because that was the one that had a lot of news around it on Thursday, as it was reported that McTavish has gone back to Ottawa and is skating with the Ottawa 67s. And you know, normally, when something like that occurs, where the player, you know, doesn’t try to find ice locally, in some places, it’s easier than others, but goes farther away, that sets off alarm bells.
You know, Pat, I saw Pat Verbeek quotes, I watched his scrum. Thank you to the reporters there who put it up, up so I could see it. And you know, the thing about this one is that they’re dug in pretty tight. I’m, I’ve heard it in several different places. No one has disputed it to me, but the Ducks do not want to do a bridge. They want to do longer-term here.
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And I do believe McTavish is receptive to that. I think he is willing to go long-term here. But as we’re seeing, there is a, the cap is exploding for the top players. The numbers are rising. And I think what the Ducks see as a long-term contract, and what McTavish’s representatives, Pat Morris at Newport, sees as a long-term number are different. They are significantly apart.
And I don’t need to repeat myself over and over and over again, but I have pointed out a couple of times how these are real grinders. Like hard-nosed negotiators on both sides of this conversation. I don’t really have a good answer for, for everyone here about how this is going to get solved.
You know, one thing I can tell you is that teams have called Verbeek, as you can imagine, about, ‘hey, if it can’t sign this guy and can’t agree with this guy, we’d love to trade for him.’ And I think Verbeek has told everybody to get lost. Like he’s not interested in doing that. And when Pat Verbeek, we all probably have a different way of how we imagine Pat Verbeek, saying ‘Get lost.’ A) and not overly polite, atone, and B) maybe not exactly those words.
But anyway, so…”
Bukaukas: “The same amount of words, just different ones.”
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Friedman: “But the fact is, he’s shown no interest in trading him. So, you know, I don’t have a solution for this one yet.
I’ll tell you what, on a previous podcast, we mentioned about how the Ducks have a bunch of young players who will need new contracts in the near future. You take a look at those, those guys. (Leo) Carlsson, really good young player. (Jackson) LaCombe, really good young player. (Cutter) Gauthier, really good young player. Like they have a bunch of really good young players.
We talked about how this is on the horizon, and another agent took that a step farther for me. He said that this is not only about the Mason McTavish negotiation, this is Pat Verbeek sending a signal that all these negotiations could be like this. That we have a line, and we’re going to hold our line, at least for now. We’ll see how this all plays out.
Like the one thing that’s true is this is a big year in Anaheim. They, they want to take a step forward. Um, internally, they’ve made it very clear about that. They just hired Joel Quenneville. You know, I mean, you’re taking a risk not having McTavish there at the start of the season. But Pat Veerbeek has made it very clear he’s not going to get pushed around on contract numbers. So we’ll see where this goes. I don’t have a great answer.”
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