Kin
New member
Frank E said:We're getting caught up in hypotheticals here.
Again, the post you responded to was entirely predicated on that assumption. I really don't understand why you'd respond to a hypothetical preposition with "BUT THAT'S A HYPOTHETICAL" but, you know, you do you I guess.
But beyond that, now you just seem to be contradicting yourself. Earlier "the goal" of negotiations was to find a middle ground. Now it's about convincing one side or the other of an initial position. Those are two fundamentally different concepts. Truth is, Nylander(or his representatives) probably has a range of numbers he'd accept and a range of numbers he feels he can support. The same is true with Dubas. As we've beaten to death in this thread, there are all manner of ways to compare players and they're going to support arguments for a wide array of numbers. It makes sense for Nylander to initially put forth something on the higher end of what he'd want(and likewise for the Leafs to go in at the lower end) and the "middle ground" they hopefully find is where the upper end of what the Leafs would find acceptable and the lower end of what Nylander would want overlap. It makes very little sense for Nylander and his representatives to start at the lower end of what they'd want.
One of the things I pride myself on is being pretty clear about things I know and things I don't know. I don't negotiate hockey contracts for a living but, I'm guessing, neither do you. The guys doing this for Nylander do it all the time. Because you "don't want to get bogged down in hypotheticals" I think we can also say fairly plainly that whatever the number Nylander's representatives have put forth they're doing so either out of a genuine interest in getting that number or it's being done with what they feel is a valid strategic purpose. Short of "getting into the hypotheticals" about what that number is and whether or not it is reasonable I think we could probably all agree without it needing to be said that the respective parties are working in what they feel are their own ultimate best interests and that everyone involved probably has a general working knowledge of the business they're conducting.
Likewise, I think we can pretty clearly say without getting bogged down in hypotheticals, that the fact that this has gone on as long as it has indicates that it was a more difficult negotiation than some people might have hoped and that there's either been a failure on the part of both sides to bring the other over to their view of things or there's just a genuine distance between them on what an acceptable number should be.