Edited Jan. 17, 2021 at 10:50 p.m.
Quoting: aadoyle
what team will be able to afford matthews when he goes. Caps staying the same for 2 more years and if it rises it will go up a mill at most. No team will have the finances to give him the bonus money or the 12mill he will crave except for the leafs. Everyone says he wants to go back to Arizona that team barely can pay for their stadium. Matthews requests a trade leafs can get a kings ransom for him like what Karlsson got but bigger. Heck go for it cause like the sharks we can get a top 3 draft another star center as by 2025 the next golden child will be on the scene.
Teams would manage themselves to fit under the cap hit to be able to sign Matthews, similarly to how the Vegas Golden Knights signed Pietrangelo to an $8 million extension. How does a general manager, who surrounds himself with statistics, calculations, and other mathematical based theories, fail to understand that you never sign a restricted free agent to his starting UFA years. You either sign him to a max extension of 8 years, or you do a deal and have a RFA year left to negotiate a new contract, and hopefully hit that max term on his new contract. Essentially, we missed an opportunity to keep Matthews until his early 30s, but instead, we can lose him when he turns 26, starting to hit his prime years.