Prior to last week’s Shea Weber-Philadelphia Flyers $110-million bombshell, more than two years had passed since the last NHL offer sheet was signed. We forgive you if you forgot that it was the San Jose Sharks’ 2010 inking of defenceman Niklas Hjalmarsson — a man with seven career goals, whose four-year, $14-million contract was matched by the Chicago Blackhawks.
Fans will have to count back another two summers to recall the offer sheets that preceded Hjalmarsson’s. The Vancouver Canucks’ Steve Bernier and St. Louis Blues’ David Backes both inked short-term contracts with rival western clubs; both were matched.
As of today, a full five years have passed since an NHL offer sheet went unmatched. (Happy anniversary, Dustin Penner!) And the bitterness of a signature that sent a pre-pancakes-fame Penner, then 24, to the Edmonton Oilers and a trio of draft picks to the cap-challenged Anaheim Ducks still lingers like barn stench.
As recently as December, GMs Brian Burke (with the Ducks at that time) and Kevin Lowe (Oilers) were still tossing jabs each other’s way.
Penner’s green-lit offer sheet was the first of its kind in a decade. All told, of the 34 offer sheets tendered in league history, only 13 have been accepted. And since 1996, only two offer sheets have successfully pried a young player away from his current team. Much more common in the NBA, where pilfering teams aren’t required to surrender a draft pick, the NHL species of offer sheet is the rarest of birds, having grown scarcer in a salary-cap world. Odds are better of an NHLer lasting an entire 82-game season without snapping his stick than having an offer sheet accepted.
“Obviously, I’m not a big fan of offer sheets,” Nashville Predators general manager David Poile told Sportsnet 590 The Fan’s Prime Time Sports on Wednesday, the day after his team matched the Flyers’ offer for their two-time Norris runner-up defenceman. “You’re probably asking the wrong guy this week that question. I don’t like it. You know that.”
Pinned in a nine-figure corner by Philadelphia, the offer sheet has proved to be Poile’s recurring nemesis. For the GM on the business end of getting a coveted RFA poached, it’s a lose-lose scenario: you either lose a star in his prime or lose all leverage you might have in negotiating a fair deal. (While Weber is undoubtedly one of the NHL’s brightest talents, you’d be challenged to find someone outside of Sicamous, B.C., who believes he should be the highest-paid player in the NHL in 2012-13, which he will be.)
Twelve summers ago, when he was managing the Washington Capitals, Poile let Scott Stevens walk on an offer sheet with the St. Louis Blues for five first-rounders — a decision he still regrets and vowed not to repeat as he watched Stevens reap individual and team trophies after moving on to New Jersey.
Under the current collective bargaining agreement, offer sheets are in place to create opportunity for the movement of under-27-year-old restricted free agents as their early-career contracts expire and reward the team that loses that player with compensation in the form of draft picks. After matching or agreeing to an offer sheet, the team cannot trade the player for a full calendar year.
“The only winner in an offer sheet is the player. Neither club really benefits from it. The player is the one that clearly benefits from the offer sheet,” Poile said.
While he didn’t go so far as to call Flyers GM Paul Holmgren “gutless” — as Burke was quoted as saying of Lowe’s Penner signing in ’08 — the diplomatic Poile hardly had kind words for a man with whom he’s done plenty of business in the past.
“Why would I be happy with that situation?” Poile said. “We’re perceived as vulnerable by some teams, and I guess Philadelphia is one of those teams, in terms of not having the resources to pay our best players.
“Would it have happened if he was playing for the New York Rangers or the Boston Bruins or the Toronto Maple Leafs? I don’t think so. So as far as friendship with Paul, we’ll be fine. It’s business; he’s trying to do his job. At the end of the day it worked out fine for us.”
And even finer for Weber, who dodged a question about whether the offer sheet, particularly a top-heavy monster of this size, presents a win-win scenario for the player: either he goes to a great young team in Philly or stays with a great young (albeit Suter-free) team in Nashville. Behind Door A is $110 million. Behind Door B: the same. Yet Weber, who likely wouldn’t have signed the sheet were it not for Suter’s departure, wanted the focus of his conference call to be hockey and not business decisions.
“We utilized the CBA the best way we could,” Weber explained. “It worked out great. I love it in Nashville. The team stepped up and showed that they’re going to spend with the best of teams.”
Poile, too, praises the maneuvering of Weber’s agents, who employed one of the league’s most stigmatized but financially-effective gambits to get Weber the brand-new market value.
“There’s hockey and then there’s the business side of hockey. And I think Shea and his representatives have done a fabulous job to get him to this point,” Poile said. “He got a $110-million, 14-year contract, all frontloaded. They did a fabulous job.”
It’s just business; it’s not hockey — that’s the one line Holmgren, Weber, Poile and the agents can chant in unison. But last we checked, actions still speak louder than words. By signing the sheet, Weber was prepared to leave. The guy wanted to win in the boardroom and on the ice, and despite its bad rap among some GMs, the offer sheet was a completely legitimate tactic in achieving his goal.
Best-case scenario, it emboldens the Predators and their fan base and doesn’t leave them cash-strapped as they try to plug in the pieces necessary to take them to a Cup final.
Poile, who expressed his shock and disappointment when Suter left, insists his relationship with his franchise player is good and points out that Weber has never uttered a negative word about Music City. He also says that he never spoke with Weber directly about the offer sheet, nor does he care to.
“Unfortunately we’ve been through a lot,” Poile says of him and his captain.
A sigh, followed by a half-joke.
“My dad told me this is a great job to get into because the hockey season is one thing, then you get the summers off,” Poile said. “I can’t wait for training camp. It’s going to be a bit calmer than right now.”
Do you think it was unethical of Weber and the Philadelphia Flyers to go the offer sheet route?
$(“#poll_10475”).v2Poll({poll_id: 10475});