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NHL player agents expecting surge in trades this summer |
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With the end of the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs mere hours away, attention will soon turn to the off-season – and after talking to a few player agents this week, I’m getting the sense this particular summer will feature more deals than we’ve been accustomed to seeing in recent years, and more short-term, “show-me” contracts for the grand majority of free agents.
With league officials expecting a salary cap ceiling increase of some $3 million – from $71.4 million in 2015-16 to $74 million next year, depending on the fluctuations of the Canadian dollar and the willingness of the NHL Players’ Association to sign off on the annual five percent escalator clause of the collective bargaining agreement – there simply isn’t enough mulligan money teams can use to bail themselves out of tight financial situations. And that’s only for teams willing to spend to the cap limit; for more than a handful of franchises, internal budgets are set substantially below the ceiling and that assuredly won’t change this summer. Veterans will be fortunate to sign two-or-three-year deals, and young, cheap talent will be utilized more than ever.
So assume right off the hop that even the best of the 2016 unrestricted free agent class – players such as Steven Stamkos and David Backes – will be hard-pressed to stir up a bidding war involving six or seven teams. This isn’t to suggest both of those players (and others in the right type of circumstance) won’t be signing lengthy and lucrative contracts; certainly, there are teams prepared to make the moves necessary to land a targeted asset, but agents are going to have their work cut out for them to maximize the value of their clients.
But although the free agent market can’t and won’t be the salvation for teams, the pressures to succeed haven’t subsided, and that’s where trades come in. And all we need to do to see how they’ll play a role this summer is to look back at more recent NHL history.
To wit: there were 38 trades made between the end of the 2015 playoffs and the start of the ’15-16 regular season; 25 deals made in the 2014 off-season, 29 in the summer of 2013, 47 in the summer of 2011 (the 2012 off-season was interrupted by a player lockout), 55 in the summer of 2010, and 47 in the 2009 off-season. It’s probably no coincidence some of those more active trade totals came in years that had minimal increases in the cap ceiling.
In the summer of 2009, for instance, the cap only raised by $100,000, from $56.7 million to $56.8 million. Similarly, in the 2010 off-season, the cap rose by $2.6 million (from $56.8 million to $59.4). And when the cap grew by nearly $5 million – as it did in the summer of 2014, going from $64.3 million to $69 million – the number of deals plummeted by more than half of what they were just four years sooner. While it’s true there’s no definitive correlation between trade activity and cap ceiling growth, agents are looking at history and preparing as if there will be significant roster turnover in many, if not the majority of NHL cities.
“Listen, something’s got to give somewhere,” said one veteran player agent, who spoke on condition his name not be used. “If you think Dean Lombardi or Jim Benning or Jeff Gorton is going to sit on his hands this summer and wait for his team to turn the page internally, you’re out of your mind. These guys are operating under enormous expectations – some from their ownership, some from their fan base, and some from both groups. They can’t do nothing. The optics of nothing are terrible.
“Bringing back the same team that underachieved, or one that is legitimately one or two pieces away from taking that next step to either being a playoff team or a Conference Finalist, isn’t going to be an option for them. So we’re working with the expectation moving companies will do some brisk business this year.”
An added wrinkle that may fuel trade fires this off-season is the prospect of NHL expansion. Don’t think for one second agents and GMs aren’t looking ahead to the ripple effects of adding another team to the league – both in terms of an expansion draft and which players will be protected, but also in terms of the domino effect that could open up a job opportunity for a client or two – and projecting where advantages can be gained.
“It’s not immediate and you know any number of things can happen before we get to (an expansion draft), so it doesn’t occupy the majority of your day thinking about the ramifications,” the same agent said. “But having said that, you’d be derelict in your duties if you didn’t take into account as many of the possibilities that are out there as you can, and keep your players informed of your strategies and involved in the process.”
When it was implemented in 2005, the cap was meant to control player costs, and not necessarily player movement. It has done its primary job, but as we’re likely to find out in the next few weeks and months, if the cap can’t control the degree of player movement, it can help determine the manner by which that movement takes place.
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