Sounds good to me! Keep him for 3 years and try to win a cup. After the 3 years you can either trade him, give him a massive 100 milly deal, or.... maybe he puts up 75 points a season and his 94 point season was a career high. In which case, we could sign him for 9.5x8 or something.

I would sign him for 9.36x3 though for sure

I believe the QO is based on base salary, so Marner's camp is gonna want a lot more than a 1.6 mil salary in that 3rd year.

If I had to choose, I'd probably just cave in to his demands for a bridge containing an absurdly high QO. He probably won't replicate his production from last season even if he spends almost all of his time with Tavares again (career years are hard to top), and if he gets split up from Tavares it'll become obvious just how much Tavares drives Marner's points (and not the other way around). Either way, you get to find out just how good of a player he is without committing long term, and if he's not as good as he currently thinks he is you can hopefully work with him to sign below his QO, and if he's as good as or better than he claims then you've got a guy who's better than Matthews or Stone or McDavid on your hands, in which case you back up the brinks truck and pay the man.

Is that so? News to me.

I've edited it. Now there's no signing bonuses for the last year.

Marner and non Leaf fans are fascinated with the Matthews contract as the basis for the Marner contract. The Aho is very good comparable.
11.643m for 5 or 8.45m X 5. Sorry 9.36 X 3 seems absurdly high. And a QO in year 4 at 11.643.m is too high also.

Aho took a discount, but Marner is never going to do that.

Also he has only one direct comparison for himself, and that's Matthews. If he were to compare himself to other signed players, he would've been signed a long time ago.

At $9,3M cap hit, he becomes reasonable to work with.

So because one guy in the league wants team comparables as opposed to league comparables, a team should bend over backwards for said player?

The league has been run on league comparables for a long time. Can that change? Perhaps but its not changing overnight as Marner wants.

Not essentially, but I kinda understand where he's coming from. If I were my team's leading scorer, and ahead of practically everyone I'm being compared to in scoring, in the scale of my team or in the scale of practically everyone in the league, I think I should get top dollar. Or at least close to it.

Granted the amounts are absolutely ludicrous, but no matter.

For him, it seems there's only one comparable, and that's Matthews. He or his agent don't give a sh*t about what other people say about that, and I kind of respect it.

Sorry, logic doesn't buy your story. "only one direct comparison, Matthews". NHL salaries are based on league wide comparisons. So if every other RFA contract (besides Marner's) is based on Aho's deal, you're saying all those other RFAs are going to be paid underpaid, and that Mathews, Marner and all future Leaf RFAs HAVE to be overpaid.
Now I admit. the Leafs and Marner might do 9.3m X 3 deal. But it is still a overpayment by league standards on a three year deal.
Leafs really just have to match any signed offer Marner has received, so they don't have to bid against themselves. Until Marner receives an offer sheet and obviously no team so far thinks he's worth his salary demands, Marner's only leverage is to without his services.

What I meant that Marner compares himself to Matthews. Others compare Marner to the rest of RFAs, but for himself he minds only one of them.

What's your feelings on the 11×7 offer? Don't you think it's slightly absurd that Marner rejected it?

Imo he should've taken it, but I guess I understand his reasoning on why declined it. "I'm a top scorer, so I shouldn't have less money and longer term than a guy who had 20 points less than I did."

As long as that stands, he can ride that high horse of his. And his agent seem to just boost it.

Aho signed an offer sheet. That isn't a discount. His team was offering him worse

It was pretty low offer sheet. If I recall correctly, his initial ask was a $9,5M x 5 contract, while CAR offered just $6M x 8. He took the MTL offer sheet because of its term, but there were a discount when compared to his initial ask.

So every RFA asks for 13m and teams like Rangers are then happy to sign Lemieux for 3m. Sorry "asking" doesn't or shouldn't influence values. Honda dealership asks 80,000 for a Civic, I shouldn't feel happy when I buy one for 50,000 when 25,000 is paid by everyone else.. Every team could have signed Aho to offer sheet.....so maybe 8.45m is his value. Leafs if they don't want to, don't have bid against themselves.

Slightly different things.

And player's initial ask has a meaning, because it starts the negotiations from the player's end. I acknowledge that if someone asks too much, the team should not take it, but still the initial ask should be heared.

And actually not every team could've signed Aho to an offer sheet. There are restrictions, starting from the cap reasons and going to the demanded picks etc.

It was lower than his initial ask, but not a discount. Anyone could have signed him to more.

It's still a top like 8 contract off an ELC ever.

The point is, Marner's initial ask is nuts.

The highest contract ever awarded to a winger off ELC is 7.5 m for 8 years. Prorated to the current cap is about 8.3 m for 8 years.

Marner was inexplicably offered 11 million over 8 years. Which is 3.7 million more almost 50% more and shut it down so hard he wasn't even going to negotiate off of it. It's insane.

Their initial ask is so high that any deal signed will seem reasonable in comparison.

But isn't that the point about Marner's negotiations.....there aren't 30 other teams thinking he's worth 11, 12m or whatever...due to cap reasons or other reasons. Actually the Leafs have good cap reasons to think his limit on the Leafs might be 10.5m. Marner being a member of the NHLPA has agreed to the signing restrictions that are on RFAs....it's certainly different than UFAs. Until he is a UFA, "restrictive" might be limiting his totally free access to 31 teams bidding for him. Even accepts "just " 10.5m, that makes him the 7th highest paid player in league. If Leafs offered 10.5m and Marner doesn't agree that is fair, he has the right to decline and sign with hundreds of other teams in dozens of leagues worldwide,