Mitch Marner: what now?

[Guilt Trip]

I'd be more inclined to keep The Big Four, and fill out the roster with who cares.  You can always find cheap players in the off season, how often do you find a Mitch Marner?  I'd let Johnsson and Kapanen sit for a year before trading Mitch Marner in a four quarters for a dollar deal. 

Just curious where are Johnsson and Kappy supposed to sit? This will boil down to the ask. If it's Matthews' money and they won't budge, I think the Leafs will have no choice but to explore option B.

 

[Kin]

I don't think anyone advocating exploring trades or drawing lines is imagining a 500k difference...

That's great but I was just illustrating the concept of negotiating for mutual benefit, which the poster I was responding to suggested didn't exist.

 

[herman]

I love you, man.  But that's just a bunch of fluff.  MLSE employs players to play hockey, and they negotiate a contract based on MLSE's benefit.  Contract ask is too much?  Then no deal, no employment.

I think that what is meant there is that Dubas sees that it's not always in a team's best interest to necessarily get the player signed for the lowest possible price and that some negotiations can create rifts between players and teams that linger beyond when a deal is signed. I'd rather Marner sign a 9.5 million aav deal that he was happy with than a 9 million dollar deal he felt undervalued and disrespected by.

Yeah that?s the long and short of it. You can see it in the Tavares contract that is lower than what he commanded on the market, but structured to leverage MLSE?s capabilities to put money in his bank up front, as well as Nylander?s and Matthews? and all the subsequent cheapo deals in slightly different ways.

Players around the league see the way these negotiations are handled and how the players are treated even if it doesn?t work out (Carrick, Leivo). I think that makes a difference.

The salary cap might be a zero sum game in and of itself, but Dubas doesn?t approach contract negotiations with each player as one. He wants to sell them on the best carrots possible, not defeat their agents with the heaviest stick.

 

[disco]

Dreger reports: $10.16 x 5 years.

What is his report? that it is done? or just speculating?

I can't find any evidence Dreger said something like that, even just speculating. He's still on the $11mil talk.

Fake twitter Dregers perhaps? Just like the Matthews contract we'll know Marner is done when LeafsPR tweets it.

jk. But Pierre LeBrun reports he consumed a Tim Horton's breakfast wrap this morning.

 

[herman]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/beyond-headlines-learned-dubas-nylander-saga/

Their negotiation on William Nylander?s second contract signals a shift in the way NHL business can be done because of the personalities at the heart of the deal.

[...]

Not only did the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager travel to Switzerland at one point to sit down face-to-face with Nylander, he kept an open dialogue through texts and phone calls.

This was not a negotiation built on threats and false deadlines and F-you?s.

[...]

Honest and straightforward. No games.

When it came time to make the deal, Dubas and assistants Brandon Pridham and Laurence Gilman got creative with Nylander and Gross, his representative.

There has never been a contract structured quite like it in NHL history.

The Leafs own tons of salary cap space this season and will start to feel the squeeze in 2019-20, so they came up with a way to pay Nylander heavy right away ? to the tune of more than $17 million by July 1, making him whole and then some for the days missed because of the impasse ? while gaming the cap system and keeping his AAV to $6.96 million for the final five years of the deal.

They also built in some lockout protection with annual signing bonuses of $3.5-million starting in 2020. They added a 10-team trade list in 2023-24, the only year he was eligible to receive such protection.

They basically guaranteed Nylander would walk away feeling good about the contract while keeping him within a range where they believe Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner can still be signed without breaking up the band.

An integrative negotiation is all about understanding what each party values most, and then collaborating on a solution. Something valuable to one party might be a very low impact concession for the other (i.e. no zero-sum). Signing bonuses mean a lot on the financial side to a player, but for the Leafs that's an easy go. It was important to Nylander that he felt valued by the team (same as Marner), and Dubas found ways to do that without necessarily nerfing his cap space: personal visit and conversation in Switzerland, signing bonuses, personally accepting responsibility for not setting up Nylander for success this past season; it all adds up because everyone is watching.

Everyone loved it when Marner sacrificed his body to block two shots to protect that lead. I don't think it's a stretch to say that players around the league took note of how Dubas Steve Rogers'd the grenade at the end of season presser.

 

[mr grieves]

I don't think anyone advocating exploring trades or drawing lines is imagining a 500k difference...

That's great but I was just illustrating the concept of negotiating for mutual benefit, which the poster I was responding to suggested didn't exist.

I didn't read Frank E's post as rejection of the concept of negotiating to mutual benefit but an expression of its limits. As herman outlines below, there are all sorts of ways one can negotiate for mutual benefit, but I don't see anything in there that's responsive to Frank's point. Yes, you can structure payouts in ways that benefit players. Yes, you can meet with them in ways that signal you value them. Yes, you can conduct yourself in such a way that players and their agents appreciate your willingness, as a manager, to deflect blame from the players or to do right by players whose careers aren't exactly flourishing in your organization.

But eventually that is all "fluff" -- you do eventually get down to the point where the annual compensation is what's left, and, as anyone of us who's negotiated his or her salary knows, all the efforts the employers has made in integrative negotiation and offering things of less value to them than the employee can mean very little indeed when you get down to what you're getting paid to do a job.

The player's side might feel entitled to all those above facets of the deal and its making--which Dubas will almost certainly provide--and an annual payout of, say, $11.616m or some number north of what the team is willing to pay.

 

[herman]

http://faceoffcircle.ca/2019/05/03/lets-talk-about-mitch-marner/

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

http://faceoffcircle.ca/2019/05/03/lets-talk-about-mitch-marner/

By far and it?s not even close, the best piece on the subject so far.

 

[mr grieves]

http://faceoffcircle.ca/2019/05/03/lets-talk-about-mitch-marner/

By far and it?s not even close, the best piece on the subject so far.

Agreed. That 11% is what I was thinking for that last while, and $9.16m or even a slight overpay at $9.516m is where I'd think the Leafs would be comfortable signing him.

 

[herman]

Meanwhile, in mainstream media...
https://twitter.com/_marlanderthews/status/1124366511907299328

 

[bustaheims]

Meanwhile, in mainstream media...
https://twitter.com/_marlanderthews/status/1124366511907299328

They just can't let go of a good narrative.

 

[cabber24]

Meanwhile, in mainstream media...
https://twitter.com/_marlanderthews/status/1124366511907299328

They just can't let go of a good narrative.

No one knew anything during/before/after the Nylander negotiations. The Leafs run a tight ship. All input from the media is speculation. Elliott's speculation during Nylander was crap.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

It's funny, getting sent back to the OHL was absolutely the best thing for Marner financially and therefore the worst for the Leafs. Odds are he wouldn't have had as good of a rookie season playing for the garbage 15/16 team and his contract year wouldn't have lined up with playing with Tavares. Thanks a lot, Lou.

 

[Deebo]

It's funny, getting sent back to the OHL was absolutely the best thing for Marner financially and therefore the worst for the Leafs. Odds are he wouldn't have had as good of a rookie season playing for the garbage 15/16 team and his contract year wouldn't have lined up with playing with Tavares. Thanks a lot, Lou.

Yeah, I don't think there was any chance he would have gotten 90 pts in his contract year if he wasn't sent back.

 

[Highlander]

To bad it is just coming down to such big money and perhaps a little greed. Lets face it when we go to sell our homes we always inflate the price, one reason to negotiate, the other reason is we feel intrinsic personal value as well. Personally if there is an offer sheet we should have a long look at it.
I don't want any one player to put us over a barrel.

We have spoken about it before, if he gets around 9 Million instead of the 11 million he seems to want then he will basically walk away from his endorsement factory.  I worked in that business and I can tell you Mitch is probably making a least a million a year in endorsements. Probably more.  How is he going to bridge that kind of earning in a mid market team?  This has to figure high in his personal decision on just what he will accept.  I want Mitch on the team, Mitch needs to be a Leaf, but greed can't sink either of our ships.

 

[Zee]

It's funny, getting sent back to the OHL was absolutely the best thing for Marner financially and therefore the worst for the Leafs. Odds are he wouldn't have had as good of a rookie season playing for the garbage 15/16 team and his contract year wouldn't have lined up with playing with Tavares. Thanks a lot, Lou.

I dunno, I wouldn't change a single thing about that 15/16 team.  Leafs finished dead last, 1 point worse than the Oilers, who knows if Marner is on that team if we don't get 2 more points that season and never draft Matthews. 

 

[ZBBM]

http://faceoffcircle.ca/2019/05/03/lets-talk-about-mitch-marner/

By far and it?s not even close, the best piece on the subject so far.

Agreed. That 11% is what I was thinking for that last while, and $9.16m or even a slight overpay at $9.516m is where I'd think the Leafs would be comfortable signing him.

That was a good story, but I think Veillette in his own way kind of cherry picks the arguments for keeping the contract down in singles.  Especially that talk about Marner's "brand" being damaged if he leaves.  I think that's pretty much nonsense.

If you are going to psychologize, I think you can do it on much simpler terms.  Marner led the team in scoring.  He's the only one of the B4 who plays the PK, and he did it well.  By all accounts he is among the top 3 most important forwards on the team.  The other 2 make north of 11.  So to me, the psychological fault line here is the $10M mark.  For better or worse, we live in a base-10 culture and people attach extra significance to being in single vs. double digits.  Marner and his pop may think he should get paid like Tavares and Matthews, but they know that ain't happening.  But what I think they will demand, and eventually get, is something over $10.  Then Marner can be classed with all the other highest paid players in the league ... and the dividing line is 10.  My prediction: he gets 5 years at somewhere between 10.2 and 10.5.

 

[herman]

The Leafs can be super ruthless about this, and nerf other teams in the process.

If Point, Rantanen, Laine, Connor are all waiting on Marner's deal, how fun would it be to sign on December 1st, 4:52 pm? In the meantime, we spend some cap on Trouba for funsies after spinning off Zaitsev and Brown.

All those other guys are probably coming in 7.5-8M for 8 years to avoid getting Nylandered, and Dubas could just ?\_(ツ)_/? and point to these new comps.

Will the Leafs be okay without Marner? Not as good as they could be, but yeah, they'll be fine. Call up Bracco if you must and put Nylander on Tavares' wing to throw more cold water on Marner's magic tap-in mystique.

Would Dubas do this? Nope.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

It's funny, getting sent back to the OHL was absolutely the best thing for Marner financially and therefore the worst for the Leafs. Odds are he wouldn't have had as good of a rookie season playing for the garbage 15/16 team and his contract year wouldn't have lined up with playing with Tavares. Thanks a lot, Lou.

I dunno, I wouldn't change a single thing about that 15/16 team.  Leafs finished dead last, 1 point worse than the Oilers, who knows if Marner is on that team if we don't get 2 more points that season and never draft Matthews. 

I'm not saying we should have, just that in the long-run there's absolutely no denying it benefited Marner immensely.

 

[Guilt Trip]

If Point, Rantanen, Laine, Connor are all waiting on Marner's deal,

Contrary to what the media says, why is Marner the main man here. Rantanen and Point had better years. I seriously doubt that they're in the let's see what Marner gets before we do our deal. Rantenan maybe first and say he signs for 9 mill per. Ammo for Dubas isn't it? US dollars are US dollars. It's not the Leafs' fault what they pay in taxes. The salary cap doesn't take taxes into consideration. All teams have 83 mill or whatever it is so.....