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Cox: Luke Schenn, kind-of-sort-of a cautionary tale for straight-to-the-NHL prospects’ employers

by George Malik on 08/06/11 at 02:45 AM ET
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While discussing the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs have something of a pickle on their hands in attempting to negotiate a contract extension with an as-of-yet inconsistent but promising defenseman in Luke Schenn, the Toronto Star’s Damien Cox suggests that players who make the jump from the draft floor to the NHL between July and October force the financial hands of their employers, sometimes regardless of their performances, as a result of teams’ haste to rush players along:

The problem with the current NHL contract structure is that for top draft picks in particular, there is no intermediate step; they jump right from their entry-level deal to gigantic dollars, in the extreme something like the five-year, $37.5 million (all figures U.S.) pact recently awarded to Steve Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The fear of offer sheets fuelled this trend, as teams sought to lock up their best young players, and agents made them pay for the privilege.

So Los Angeles, to name one team, is in a quandary as it assesses the dollars it wants to throw at Drew Doughty, the second overall pick in the ’08 draft. The Kings think they have a star, but last season delivered a few second thoughts on that front, enough that Dean Lombardi has some serious thinking and negotiating to do.

With Schenn, the financial commitment won’t be as onerous. But it will almost certainly be for multiple years and for upwards of $10 million in total, depending on the term, so this isn’t as easily digestible as giving goalie James Reimer three years at $1.8 million per season.

In a perfect world, perhaps the Leafs would be able to buy time with, say, a two-year deal along the lines of the contract ($2.6 million cap hit) St. Louis gave the first pick of the ’06 draft, Erik Johnson, before trading him and that contract to Colorado. But such a short-term arrangement isn’t likely to have much appeal to the Schenn camp. He has four seasons to go before unrestricted free agency, and the guessing is agent Don Meehan would love to see Schenn earn an average of $4 million until then, before having his contract expire after the fourth season.

The Leafs, with assistant GM Claude Loiselle in charge of the negotiation, probably want a salary that starts in the $2.5 million to $3 million range, with the term either three years — one short of Schenn’s unrestricted season — or five years, which means the club would effectively be buying one year of that UFA status. So this becomes a subtle dance between the two camps, even more delicate given that Doughty hasn’t signed. Neither has Winnipeg defenceman Zach Bogosian (third overall in ’08) and [St. Louis Blues defenseman Alex] Pietrangelo’s next negotiation is still two seasons off. The comparables are either unhelpful or non-existent at this point.

Continued

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