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Pietrangelo "excited" to test free agency

September 21, 2020, 4:58 PM ET [618 Comments]
Mike Augello
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The focus of the free-agent market has fixed on St. Louis Blues team captain Alex Pietrangelo after reports over the weekend indicated that talks between the Blues and the blueliner have broken off late last week. While there continues to be chatter that this is a negotiating tactic to get the Blues to increase their offer and structure it more to Pietrangelo’s liking, St. Louis reporter Andy Strickland believes that the 30-year-old is now looking forward to fielding offers from other NHL clubs, including his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs.

Strickland reported that same figures that The Athletic’s Jeremy Rutherford indicated on Saturday ($8 million per season on an eight-year max deal), and that that there might be some flexibility on the Blues willingness to give the defenseman a no-movement clause, but the divide between the two sides is over the structure of the deal.

St. Louis under GM Doug Armstrong philosophically do not believe in signing bonuses on contracts. All of the recent deals negotiated by the Blues (Vladimir Tarasenko, Brayden Schenn, Justin Faulk, Marco Scandella, Jordan Binnington) does not include a dollar of bonus money. The only contract that does include bonuses is Ryan O’Reilly’s, which was a seven-year deal signed while the Conn Smythe winner was with the Buffalo Sabres.

According to Strickland, the prospect of potentially going to free agency excites Pietrangelo for the purposes of seeing what kind of offers are out there and from teams that might have a longer window to contend for the Stanley Cup than the Blues, that the blueliner may be feeling disrespected after Armstrong traded for and re-signed Justin Faulk and Marco Scandella last season after being a big part of the club’s first championship in 2019, and that is not unrealistic that he would like to sign with the Maple Leafs if they are able to offer him a deal with the right conditions and structure.

Toronto under GM Kyle Dubas has used signing bonuses as an enticement to get deals done with all of their recent signings (John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson, Jake Muzzin), so it is likely that if Pietrangelo reaches the open market on October 9 that the Leafs and other clubs will offer a deal more to his liking, but that does not guarantee that Pietrangelo will not go back to the Blues and give them a chance to match the offer.

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