What i find interesting is the lack of willingness to take the hometown discount that others did early on in their negotiation. All the others guys looked at the team and said ok screw for an extra mil. Im on a top team making good money and the weather is nice. Lets get going. Point appears to be not willing to do so.

We have no idea what goes on in contract discussions. It’s not like they are working hard to hammer out a contract every day of the summer, sometimes there’s no pressure until training camp gets close. If he sits during the regular season you are much more justified in this speculation, but for now it’s wrong to think less of point for not having a contract. Same goes for other RFA’s.

Source? If it's just the fact that he would have signed by now if he were being agreeable, according to Friedman, the two sides have barely talked (and it takes time to finalize contract details even after the AAV is decided), so it really indicates nothing regarding his contract demands that he's still unsigned.

Source?? I'm just posting my opinion.....

As for trying to defend this, Im simply pointing out that Kucherov, Stamkos, Hedman, Vaselevskiy, etc all signed their contracts well before camp started. With cap hhits mots would agree were less than they probably could have gotten. (Maybe Vasilevskiy was full value but it was signed pretty quickly)

Point seems to be the outlier here.

Think less of? Where are you guys getting that from what I posted? I simply said based on the willingness for the other guys to sign their contracts , Point is the guy that is taking the longest out of all of them. Hinting at not being willing to take a discount and going for full value. The other stars on the team all signed mammoth contracts well before any speculation of them signing took place. Stamkos being the only UFA tested free agency but only for the sake of doing so it seemed.

Kuch sat out training camp before signing a bridge deal. As stated JBB will hold tight and Point will come around eventually. https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/nikita-kucherov-signs-bridge-deal-tampa-bay-lightning/

Wasn't his "big deal" though. His bridge was a lowball of all lowballs and everyone knows it, that's why it dragged out. He had a real "reason" to sit out. I don't blame him for that. Making almost 10M and among the the highest paid players in the league at your age? That's a different story.

That is why I think it will be a bridge deal as I stated before. We don't know what has been asked or offered. All we have is speculation and gossip. This does not appear to be like the Marner negotiations.

If it is, and I agree no one knows, they better not be expecting a Kucherov level of bridge. I'm not trying to make connections to Marner here. Simply pointing out that assuming a fair offer has been given to Point (Minimum 8-9M), Im surprised he hasn't signed that already considering the other players being willing to get a deal done earlier. Once again one can only assume here but I don't know any specifics. if the Bolts are the ones pushing for a bridge at 5M per, I am for Point sitting out until TB gets closer to that 7-8M range on a bridge.

I'm guessing but I think JBB is pushing 3 years 8-8.4 mill similar to AHO with less term. With next year signings I do not think the number can be any higher.

Agreed. If that is what he's pushing I'm surprised Point hasn't already signed.

Oh, sorry, I was just asking if you had a source to indicate that Point was holding out because he didn’t want to take a discount versus has not really had very much discussion with BriseBois yet, or if it was just an opinion. To me it seems like it could be the latter.