The Danbury Trashers have a better chance of signing Barkov in FA then the Wings.

Why would Barkov leave no tax Florida to sign with Detroit?

Barkov is 100% staying in Florida, And it makes zero sense to draft Shane Wright sign Aleksander Barkov and hold onto Dylan Larkin. I'm all for giving Leddy 2 x $4,500,000 but noway on Morgan Rielly both Albert Johansson and Simon Edvnsson will be knocking on the door in a year or two.

The argument of why he'd leave FL for 12.5mm is that neither Florida team can't afford 12.5mm in their current cap structures. Though I don't think he'd get 12.5mm/yr. He's not McDavid. Bob's $10mm/year is really screwing FLA now.

Also, MI is not CA, NY, NJ, or Canada on the tax front. He's not losing 15-30% value moving to MI, he's losing 4.5%. There are plenty of states where the tax hit isn't significant enough to immediately turn down a contract (especially a massive overpay).

Zero chance Barkov gets 12.5mm/year. He's not McDavid. He might get closer to Drai money, but I think he even gets less. While he's an elite #1 C, he's not even a PPG scorer, he's more known as a 2-way elite C, which is going to cost him some money. He's Zetterberg basically, always going to be in the Selke conversation (and may even win a few).

Also, no way Rielly gets 8.5mm. He might get $7mm, but he's not Hamilton level player. His numbers don't come close to that. I think Rielly gets between 7-7.5mm/year.