Here we go...here comes the conspiracy theories...

For all we know, Dundon made fun of Bergy’s biceps at the draft, and this was a way of retaliation by making Dundon pay big fat cheque’s for the next 5 years. Moral of the story, don’t make fun of a General Manager with big biceps of an organization that can force you to sign big fat cheque’s for the next 5 years!

See I can do it too!!!


Jokes aside, I’m willing to bet it’s as simple as Bergevin thought he could financially squeeze an low budget team, and tested it out. It didn’t work, and there was virtually no consequence to trying.

It's not the same question due to tax reasons. We all know TB can offer less and the player will make more.
This is what it is. Toronto threw money at everyone you think the guy who was their best player on the ice last year isn't going to get his too?

no one ever said he'd make 11.6
Actually you can go find my posts where I say he'll get 10.6 range. roughly the area of 4 1st round picks to offer sheet him. and that's fair considering he was the best player on the team last year and other people got more.
I'll stand by that.

So what does MTL do now? Offer sheet for Marner? Point? Rantanen? How much would it take to land one of these young stars? Personally, I think they should offer Point the max amount for the 2nd highest tier, which is about $10.568M AAV. The comp would be two 1st's, one 2nd, and one 3rd round draft pick. MTL would be getting the franchise C they desperately need. I think TBL would have a very difficult time matching at $10.5M. The only question would be: Would Point actually sign the offer sheet? I have no idea.

Bergevin totally underestimated Aho's value, or else wasn't really serious about signing him. The offer sheet was at least $2M short of what it probably would've taken to steal Aho from CAR.

I mean, one could almost say, MB tried to strong-arm the Hurricanes organization.

But this is where I feel like something is off. Besides elation, what was your first reaction to the offer sheet? If anyone says anything other than "That won't be enough", they're lying. So we the fans knew, he'd sign but MB, one of the most conservative GM' in the league didn't?

I don't buy this "nothing lost, nothing gained" ideology. If this was indeed not a premeditated agreement with Waddell, MB loses face by losing a offer sheet. Ask Paul Holmgren how his ability to negotiate with other teams was diminished by what he did to Nashville with Weber. He had to relinquish his job as GM as a result......

If you are going to do this, and we all know this is how it works, you either get the player your offer sheeting and other the team gets the nice reward in the form of draft picks or you don't do the offer sheet. Failure is not an option with offer sheets. MB threw a low risk high reward offer out there except it wasn't so low risk was it? Now he has a target on his back. Now other teams have less incentive to work with MB. That code he was preaching about years ago, he's the first one to break it.

I'm happy MB had the balls to finally do one but the thing is he didn't really do it. He made everyone think he did by going through the motions with an empty half hearted effort.

Frankly im being extremely pessimistic about his intentions and i get that, the post was 1/2 serious,1/2 cynical but if he was serious, that leaves me even worse off then before. If it was an "inside job", I can at least understand it 100%. If he seriously thought there was a shot at getting Aho with that offer, that Aho's agent wasn't just playing him and that he must have assembled enough Intel about Dundon's finances that he wouldn't be willing to pay out the high signing bonuses, than I question MB's understanding of the situation.

MB didn't lose anything tangible by making this offer sheet so nothing was physically lost but make no mistake about, literally no one really thought he was going to win this offer and by doing it and not winning, he gave up some serious credibility amongst his peers. That's why i feel there was slightly more to this than what transpired in front of the camera's.

We'll never know of course, so its a pointless thing to read too much into but this was a big deal and one that could have made shockwaves. Instead, MB now has even more pressure to deliver than previously and once again I feel he painted himself into this corner needlessly.

For the price of an extra 1st rounder and a couple mil extra, this deal would have at least been believable. That way everyone would have taken it seriously and Dundon may have had to think about it a little more.

I'm just hoping he isn't another Dustin Penner aka Pancakes ... I'm sure Carolina would have wanted longer term or less money if not both . They are only to blame for wasting time getting Marleau to buy him out or other moves like that instead of hammering this thing out to avoid this happening... I'm real glad Montreal pushed the envelope though to make off season more interesting hehe...

I agree going up a compensation bracket would've made it more believable. I don't think it would of made a difference though. CAR would of matched basically anything below the 4 1st's compensation.

Here's a conspiracy theory for ya! Aho was never Bergevin's real target.


This Offer Sheet was all a scheme to show another GM that if he doesn't trade the player Bergy is after, he'll do the same super front loaded deal, but with even worse signing bonuses. And the player Bergy is after is..... Patrick Laine

I'd find it hilarious in the coming weeks, Bergevin offer sheets Laine at something similar or higher, or we hear a trade for him. You can argue WIN are in a worse situation than CAR being a small market team , since they are actually cap strung. Sure they have $22mil now, but that's with only 15 players on their roster. and you have to imagine Laine and Connor chew up at least $16mil of that combined lol

I thought it was a stupid move to easy to match and wait for the revenge on Domi and KK

So if he knew it would be matched either way, why not throw the maximum he would be willing to offer then? That way you get Carolina to be way over their internal budget and get them to pay more on a player than they were looking to do? That way there are some tangible benefits to doing it. This offer by MB did nothing. It was pointless. It literally only has negative effects on his GM "respect level" and the only positivity he got was because he made the fan base happy for a grand total of 2 days.....

As someone else put it, this was a lesson in how NOT to offer sheet. We waited for someone to finally take the risk and this was there best option?

Bergie tried to be safe in game of high risk, high reward. That's not how this works. If it was a low risk low reward game, more GM's would be doing it. There's a reason why teams have stayed away from doing it and it was precisely what MB did, who laughably thought he was being smart...... No MB, you look dumb now. Good job.

As for Laine, hey at this point, I hope MB offer sheets every remaining RFA till he gets one because his GM rep will start to make GM's not want to deal with him the more he does it, just like it did for Holmgren. At least though, like Holmgren, he can step down and have someone else fresh come in with no animosity from other GM's and that newly acquired offer sheeted player too.

Love that theory, but if I'm not mistaken it can't be Laine, well at the very least it wouldn't be the same type of OS; the front loaded signing bonus trick can only be used on US residents transferring to a Canadian team.

Pretty much nailed it.