With less than 12 hours remaining before they lose the ability to offer an extra year, the Calgary Flames are putting forward their best offer for Johnny Gaudreau. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff tweets that Calgary has offered an eight-year contract worth more than $10MM per season, which would make the pending free agent winger one of the highest-paid players in the NHL. He notes that if Gaudreau leaves Calgary tomorrow “it likely won’t be because of money.”
Unlike free agency itself, which doesn’t open until midway through Wednesday, a team’s right to sign one of its own players to an eight-year deal expires at midnight (EST). That means if there’s no deal by tomorrow and Gaudreau is to land more than this $80MM+ on the table from Calgary, he would need to sign a seven-year deal worth at least $11.43MM per season. That number would put him fifth in the entire league, behind only Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin, Auston Matthews, and Erik Karlsson in terms of cap hit.
Total money isn’t always the deciding factor though, especially not for NHL players (or at least their agents) who can see the salary cap rising significantly in a few years. That extra year for Gaudreau might not be as important as seeing what kind of teams are interested, and what is the best fit for his career moving forward.
The Flames, of course, will have a huge hole in their lineup if Gaudreau decides to leave–and a bunch of cap space to fill it with. The team currently sits with more than $26MM in room, though that doesn’t factor in extensions for Matthew Tkachuk, Andrew Mangiapane, and Oliver Kylington, who are all restricted free agents.
Gaudreau was the unanimous top selection in our UFA list, following his outstanding 115-point season.
If Gaudreau doesn’t take that deal from Calgary, my bet is they swoop in and get Kadri instead.
Yep. Agreed
huge blow if he doesn’t sign that deal.
Alot of players don’t want to play In socialist Canada and because of high taxes. USA USA USA!!!!!!!
Enjoying your $100,000 hospital visit and mass shootings?
California and New York aren’t exactly low tax havens either. :/
You’re embarrassing.
You could say the same about California, Seattle, NYC, Boston Chicago and jersey
FJB is embarrassing.
Didn’t Denmark have a mass shooting too, just the other day. You know Denmark, the country with VERY tight gun controls.
How come so many Canadians come to the US for Healthcare? Enjoying your long waits and crappy healthcare?
Canada is not Socialist.
Okay, communist, but why quibble over details. ;p
Youre greedy capitalist overlordss really used your own government to scare you away from a system that benefitss everyone the same. Drone
If Canada isn’t socialist, what is it?
Maggot- is this a real question?
F L Y E R S
Normally I would say that the Flyers couldn’t afford Gaudreau with their cap crunch, but then I remember that that is not usually a deterrent for Fletcher so I would place money on the fact that they’re throwing the book at him
Just get the feeling he wants to go home
Once again wilf steps up and makes a complete arse of himself.
What do you mean. Everybody knows hijacking anonymous hockey comment boards is a true alpha character trait.
I think if Johnny doesn’t go for an 8-year fair or even generous offer from CGY, it may be down to Darryl wearing on him. Darryl still adheres to the “bad old ways” of coaching sometimes, especially using the media scrums to call out a player, instead of keeping that behind closed doors. He’ll hammer on a guy one day, but give him a 5-star “Atta-Boy!” the next.
“I hope number 500 is better than 499…”
“He’s our best forechecker!”
Darryl’s tremendously entertaining to listen to most nights, but doing what Randy did, just in a different voice, may not sit well with some players.
So if it may be Sutter wearing on him I can’t imagine it would better if wants to come home and play for Torts.
Utter BS speculation. Complete opposite of what John and his own father has said.
rdiddy75 – That’s right – out of the frying pan and into the fire. Johnny’s outlook probably wouldn’t get much better, but he’d get paid more.
@windmill_noise_causes_cancer – We aren’t speculating on him leaving because of a contract offer that may or may not meet his or his family’s approval. We are saying that *IF* he chooses to go elsewhere, it might not be just for the $$$. Personally, I’d rather see him stay put and KEEP the band together. Naturally, he can’t control or even influence other guys’ future contract situations, but if he stays, maybe they’ll look at things in a different light.
It’s a fact that some players especially Americans don’t want to play In Canada and If Canada Isn’t socialist what Is It? And why Is It that alot of Jets players can’t wait to leave Winnipeg?
You’re correct, Eugene Melnyk was the last owner of a business in Canada. With his passing, every single corporation is now collectively owned. Canada can be classified as nothing other than socialist.
Please try to understand what words mean before you use them as buzzwords. It will save yourself further embarrassment.
The thing is, HabsFan, that languages evolve and the meaning of words can change.
For example, in the 80’s the word “bad” started to mean “good”. Or the way “dope” can refer to a variety of drugs, a stupid person or something that is cool.
In the US, the word “socialist” now means “anything Tucker told them not to like”.
This coming from Josh who gets his daily talking points from Media Matters.
This coming from a Hannitized wind up toy who has bragged on multiple occasions now the he’s muted me.
Not sure of the exact ratio of insecurity and false bravado that would lead a person to do that even once let alone more than once, but either way, pretty sad.
Muting you would deprive me of reading your inane rantings. Why would I do that?!
One would hope at some point once the economy goes into recession and you’re on your 5th booster shot that you look at your Biden/Harris bumper sticker and mumble to yourself “WTF?”.
Why would you do that? I dunno, maybe you should ask the guy who bragged about it on at least 3 different occasions…AKA you.
Likely you thought bragging about muting me, despite never doing it, would make you somehow seem tough (‘I BLOCKED him’) but now after this lie crumbles you realize it actually just made you look like a snowflake who needed his safe space.
But, feel free to go back pretending, I can live without engaging with incessant whining about David Poile and gems like “cAnAdA iS cOmMuNiSt!!!” just fine….surely you can resist my “inane rantings”, right?
I’ll totally pretend to believe you when you lie about blocking me again.
It’s just a matter of time before Matthews contract Is up and heads to Arizona or California.