Are Future CBA Negotiations the Reason Why Players Sign New Deals in Season Now?
Dave Pagnotta was on TSN Radio in Montreal on Monday and was asked why there has been an uptick in players and teams trying to get new contracts done during the season.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
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Host: “What do you make of various teams and players trying to make new contracts during season?”
Dave Pagnotta: “It’s a little bit of a trend, or a change in trend we’ve seen, you know, sometimes we’ve seen this more so geared towards, some of the younger players, but Jake McCabe gets a five-year extension with Toronto. We saw (Alexis) Lafreniere get his deal last week, depending on who you talk to, and apparently, you talk to Brad Marchand himself; he says nothing’s close.
But I think his agent and Don Sweeney may have other thoughts about that, that they’re inching towards one, getting closer on that front. There’s been progress there as a report over the weekend suggested.
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And going back to the Rangers; there’s also K’Andre Miller. There’s also, obviously, we saw Oettinger get his extension. I think there are two different reasonings.
One, when one guy signs, it kind of has a little bit of a trickle effect in terms of sparking conversations with other groups and with players. So when Swayman got his deal that sparked things between Jake Oettinger and the Dallas Stars. Prior to that, they had some loose conversations, and the Swayman deal kicked in. All right, now we’ve got a direct comparable that we can include as part of these talks. Let’s hammer away at this particular deal.
Toronto gets McCabe done , and that also transpired relatively quickly. They had conversations in the summer. They had them in camp, the season started. There hadn’t really been much negotiation, really up until Saturday, Friday or Saturday, when Treliving and Brian Bartlett, McCabe’s agent sat down over the weekend and hammered out that deal.
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So sometimes it takes short order, and sometimes it takes a little bit longer. But what we’re seeing now is, because these guys are signing, it’s now a domino effect kicking in a little bit to try to get these deals kind of locked in.
The other factor into all of this is the CBA expires in less than two years. And you know, a lot of it, especially on the veteran side, but even on the younger side, we’re noticing now a lot of teams wanting to get some of their guys done. That doesn’t mean anybody should worry about there being a potential stoppage because I don’t think anybody in the National Hockey League on the Players’ side or the League side even wants to think about a potential stoppage.
They’re very, very happy with how the direction of the league is going, and we’ll probably hear news about a new CBA in the summer, a year before it expires, which is great, but that’s also a factor in terms of negotiations to try to get your bigger boys or your core pieces locked in early, ahead of whatever the new one would kick in.”
