Snapshots: Contract Negotiating, Escrow, Second Draft Lottery

Trying to negotiate a new contract in the looming new marketplace is going to be tough as the projected salary cap increases aren’t coming for a while like they used to.  Accordingly, how discussions for a new deal occur are likely to change as well.  Speaking with Postmedia’s Jim Matheson, agent Gerry Johansson discussed his approach towards how things may change for a while:

Right now, we’re just giving our players guidance that it could be a tough year. We’re telling them that this is the year to take a deal even if it’s not the one you might want. It’s like musical chairs. There are 100 players and only 75 chairs.

Johansson noted that he doesn’t have many notable players that are slated to become unrestricted free agents in November so his focus will be shifted towards working on extensions for clients like Anaheim’s Ryan Getzlaf and Montreal’s Brendan Gallagher who will be entering the final year of their contracts next season. PuckPedia has a full listing of Johansson’s client list.

Elsewhere around the hockey world:

• The players have opted to put their final regular season pay into escrow, a decision that had seemed like the probable outcome for a while. Accordingly, the escrow percentage for the season jumped from 14% to 19.55%, notes Gavin Hockey Wealth (Twitter link).  If that seems high, keep in mind that the escrow percentage for the next couple of seasons appears to be slightly higher as the recent CBA talks have that pegged at 20% to help offset the expected drop in league revenues as a result of the pandemic.
• It doesn’t appear as if we’ll be waiting too long after the completion of the play-in round to know who has the top pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft which is tentatively slated to occur sometime in mid-October. In the latest Insider Trading, TSN’s Bob McKenzie reports that the second draft lottery is likely to take place immediately following the conclusion of the best-of-five series which would be around August 10th or 11th.  The second lottery is required after the results of the first lottery revealed that one of the teams that loses in that round will get that top selection with each team having identical one-in-eight chances of winning.