Sportsnet: Corey Masisak on The Jeff Marek Show on San Jose Sharks pending free agent forward Timo Meier.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “One of the things I think we’re going to be following all season long is a situation with Timo Meier and the next contract. Now, for those who don’t follow the San Jose Sharks closely, his AAV, his cap hit is $6 million but his qualifying offer just to keep him and keep his rights, San Jose has to qualify him at $10 million.
Has there been any indication what this one is going to look like? What is this negotiation going to be like? What’s the relationship between the player and a new general manager with this organization? How do you see the Time Meier situation playing itself out and right now, this season isn’t exactly helping his own cause.
Last year he was a point-a-game guy. We’re speculating he should have 40 goals every year. He’s got two points after six games.
How do you see the Meier situation playing here?”
Masisak: “I think having the new GM and the new coach, and really the new regime has really thrown a wrinkle in it. I think, just going be to last year they had Tomas Hertl in a similar situation, are they going to keep him long-term or not?
At that time I thought it was either both or neither. If you’re all in on one, you better be all in on the other too. Just because I’m not really sure where that leaves them over the next few years if they don’t have both of them. Or, we’d definitely know where it would leave them if they didn’t have either of them.
So, Mike Grier and the agent Claude Lemieux both have sort of said they aren’t in any rush. They kind of want to get to know each other. Timo wants to get to know the coaching staff and the GM. So there’s no rush to do anything now but like you said, it’s just a different, if they had to qualify him at $6 or $7 million and they were looking at, we could do a two-year deal or a six-year deal, just kind of a normal negotiation, I think it would be a lot different than – it’s either a one-year deal for $10 million and then goes to market or can you negotiate him down below ten per year? Or does he just feel given all the contracts that have been signed over the past couple of offseasons that maybe, maybe he’s just going to be worth $10 million-plus.
And obviously, they, the Sharks can say they want to keep him but they also have to worry about how squeezed they are against the cap. Now, if the cap does start going up that’ll help them a little bit. It’s just a matter of, they can probably keep him if they really, really want to and he really, really wants to stay. It’s a matter of whether those things are going to be true or not.”
Marek: “It’s always, as a manager and owners will bring this up on a consistent basis, it’s a really tough one to stomach when you have salary cap issues cause you’re right up against the cap and there’s no playoff revenue.
There’s some big tickets here. You mentioned Tomas Hertl, he re-upped with the team last year, that’s an $8 million deal. Logan Couture is in at $8 million as well. The Karlsson deal is $11.5 . Vlasic’s in at $7 . Someone like Kevin Labanc, who’s at $4.7 , he’s scratched night against the New York Rangers. There are big commitments here for money and right now, you’re the owner of the San Jose Sharks, you’re not seeing a return right now on any of this.”
Masisak: “Ya, I think that’s, I guess I would say in this scenario, they are probably pretty lucky to have an owner who doesn’t seem like he’s particularly interested in whether he loses $5 million this year or $10 million this year.
He’s a very interesting character. I’ve been trying to learn more about him this year, working on a story on him. He wants to win. When the team was winning, he’s the best owner in sports, everybody loves him, and now when they’re not winning, fans wish he’d just be okay with rebooting and starting over and that’s just not in his nature.
I think they’re in a scenario here where they just don’t want to not win on purpose but maybe the roster is leading them in that direction. But at the same time, like I said before, if you don’t have Timo Meier over the next few years, it’s going to make it incredibly hard for them to turn this around without kind of a full turn to the bottom for multiple years.
I think whenever the GM job was open, somebody had said, one of the best owners in the league, one of the worst Cap Friendly pages. That’s sort of what the job that Mike Grier has inherited here. There’s some very significant pros to the job and there was some cons too. It’s just a matter of how much patience everybody is going to have to sort of sort this out, cause there are certain contracts on there that might not be able to move them or get out of them for three to four years.”
** NHLRumors.com transcription