Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:30 pm EDT
Dreaming of Mike Green? The Caps just sent a wake-up call
Buried inside a Sunday column that accuses NHL officials of being in the tank for Crosby and the Penguins (hockey referees, subjectively calling penalties? Très scandaleux!), Larry Brooks of the NY Post reported that RFA defenseman Mike Green of the Washington Capitals was being "low-balled" by his team in negotiations.
Simply put, Green is the best young defenseman in hockey. His 56 points in 82 games, including a League-best 18 goals, were a revelation last season; having watched the kid for most of those games, his star qualities go beyond the numbers. He's a great stickhandler, and he glides along the blue line on the power play with Niedermayer-like effortlessness. He makes mistakes that a 22-year-old defenseman should make; but his speed allows him to cover up for many of them, and eventually he'll stop making them. If you're building a defense in today's NHL, you start with a player like Mike Green.
But the question is whether the "low balling" actually is true. J.P. from Japers' Rink adds up the evidence and points a finger at Green's agent (and formerly Alexander Ovechkin's) Don Meehan:
It could mean that the Caps are offering a deal that's way below Meehan's assessment of market value or it could mean that the Caps are offering a deal that's way below what Meehan is willing to accept for reasons detailed above. If it's the former, perhaps there's hope that the two sides can reach some middle ground (though I personally wrestle with what legitimate market value for a 22-year-old with Green's upside is, and I imagine I'm not alone). If it's the latter, however, and there's nothing that fits within the Caps salary structure that they could offer and have Meehan accept, there's little point in continuing negotiations at this point.
Green made peanuts last year ($833,000 cap hit), so any initial offers were likely to be low by an agent's standards. The real concern in the negotiation is Kevin Lowe someone swooping in and offering Green an astronomical contract that either blows out the Capitals' salary structure (if that's possible post-Ovechkin) or forces them to let Green skate away. Losing a restricted free-agent defenseman is a touchy subject in D.C.; if you need to ask why, just count how many times the name "Scott Stevens" is listed on the Stanley Cup.
At a press conference today about the NHL Draft, Washington General Manager George McPhee decided to put an end to the speculation that Green could leave. From Tarik El-Bashir of The Washington Post's Capitals Insider:
"If someone puts an offer sheet in front of one of our players," McPhee said during a news conference in Arlington to preview this weekend's NHL Entry Draft, "we'll match it - probably in less than 10 minutes." McPhee's comments come a few days after a source told me that Green's camp - which is unhappy with the offers it has received to this point - plans to take negotiations to July 1 in the hopes of attracting an offer sheet.
If that offer comes, the Capitals appear ready to match it. Which is great news for a franchise that can't afford to lose a budding star like Green, who could be a fixture on the blueline for the next decade.
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Greg Wyshynski
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21 Comments
1 - 21 of 21
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The price of said offer sheet just rose another $10 million total by those words alone.
You'd think after the Vanek fiasco last year (where Darcy Regier said basically the same thing) that GM's wouldn't publicly state they'd match ANYTHING?
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McPhee is just telling other GMs that all they're doing by putting an offer out there is raising the market price on all players, so don't bother. But any GM who wants to play dirty pool (second bar room metaphor of this comment, mind you) and bump up the salary just to try to screw another team does so at his own peril.
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As a Devils fan, I'd love to see whatever Lou intends to pay Brian Campbell, and turn it into an offer for Green instead.
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100% agreed on that, which was the main criticism (hypocrisy even?) of the Lowe offer sheet to Vanek. He was only hurting himself by trying to poach another "small market"'s star.
As a slight aside, I really don't think the draft pick compensation scares anyone at this point though either. Preliminary calculations have the 4 1st's compensation over $6.8 million per year - which is absurd and something we'd only see for a Malkin-type player - which a team would never let go of, at any cost.
The Vanek contract may have scared other GM's to the point of soiling themselves, knowing that at some point (where your poker game analogy comes in) that someone will sign an offer sheet at the 4 1st's level and then the rival GM will call their bluff, leaving them with an albatross contract AND the loss of 4 1st round picks (which are invaluable in a cap world).
I don't think any GM, unless they have nothing to lose and are on the way out, would even think of taking that kind of risk anymore. But my point was that every penny spent on Mike Green (which will be well worth it, by the way) is one less penny spent on bringing other, secondary talent to Washington.
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I hate to keep bringing up Vanek, but Vanek went from making under $900,000 to making $10 million last season based on one 43-goal season.
It's obviously not going to be as extreme for Green, but personally, I think we could see a 6 year, between $25 and $30 million offer sheet.
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And dude can rock the Segway: http://ballhype.com/video/washington_capitals_on_segways/
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The Caps match a $5m/yr offer without even thinking about it. They probably match a $6m/yr deal in a hearbeat, too, in part because they think he will be worth it, but also because the compensation, frankly, sucks. Once you cross that "four first round picks" threshhold, however, they may start to reconsider. But at that point, the team on the other side is spending at least $6.8m (your number) per year on Mike Green and has limited its ability to surround Green (and others) with free agents (because of the dollars) and cheap young talent (because of the draft picks). Is anyone really going to throw that much at Mike Green? I guess we'll (perhaps) wait and see. And if they do, can the Caps really justify letting him walk for what may be $1 million per year more than they were willing to pay after preaching "rebuilding" and "homegrown talent" for so long?
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I really don't think the Caps can justify letting him walk just as the Sabres couldn't justify letting Vanek walk after they lost Briere and Drury. It depends on whether GM's want to play that high-stakes poker game with Green, which as you imply, probably isn't out there anymore after last summer.
Another point that may be moot if he's not.....Is Green arbitration eligible? That's one way to protect him from an offer sheet, as the Pens did with Fleury. But even if he was, would the Caps dare to do that?
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I don't know if you read the post from my site that Greg linked to, but another (perhaps the "real") reason that this may go to the RFA negotiation/signing period (as GDub alludes to) is that Meehan may want to screw the Caps (meaning that there's no offer the Caps can reasonably make right now that would be accepted by the Green camp), in which case all GMGM can do is let someone else do his dirty work.
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There's no doubt someone would bite on signing Green to an offer sheet. And there's no doubt that "GMGM" (took me a second to figure that out - not a Caps fan) would instantly accept unless it hits the 4 1st's level, which as you said, would force him to take a long, hard look at things, but I don't think it will.
Meehan's done this kind of crap his whole career as an agent. I just hope it doesn't come back to biting the Caps in the rear end. But I guess GMGM really doesn't have a choice now. For the Caps' sake, I hope he'll be signed reasonably.
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Nashville signed him VERY reasonably, but I'm still thinking my earlier proposed offer sheet of 6 years/$25-$30 million probably stands.
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shalom washington
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Take a look at what 3 first round picks did for dc (semin, ovechkin, backstrom), and pitt (malkin, crosby, staal). then compare it to what one overpriced marquee player does to a team... (jagr in washington / vanek in buffalo / penner in edmonton). big cap hits for mediocre production, and the inability to surround them with enough talent.
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Typical New Yorker comment. Every great player "fits" onto your teams. Step outside of your NY-centric shell into the world around you for a second: everyone wants a player like Mike Green.
If, as Matt here suggests, the offer is 6 years, $25-30 million, that would be a steal because a.) that averages to at most $5 million per year, which I can pretty much guarantee is below what his agent wants, and b.) that cuts into his first year of UFA. Either way, if any team can afford to pay Green it's the Caps. Keep dreaming Rags fans, and enjoy the rest of the Jagr era.
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the real issue for the capitals is in goal. is varlamov ready for a shot at the nhl? how many years / $$ would it take to re-capture huet? in my mind, goalie - and mike green - are the key issues for the Capitals.
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