Brendan Shanahan hasn’t missed many high notes since assuming command of the moribund Maple Leafs in April 2014. He has been a progressive leader of the fabled franchise that hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, the last year of the Original Six, selling both ownership and a demanding fan base on a meticulous rebuild plan that would demand patience. In many ways, the Rangers are copying his blueprint.
But boy, did Shanahan blow some sour notes this week when he suggested the recalcitrant, unsigned restricted free agent William Nylander and pending 2019 Group II’s Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner should be willing to take hometown discounts in order to accommodate Toronto’s cap crunch and thus remain Maple Leafs through this era of revival.
The club president did what players who move into management always do, ignoring their own, often inconvenient, histories. Indeed, Shanahan applied selective memory in harkening back to his Stanley Cup-winning days in Detroit while implying that the marquee Red Wings took less money in order to remain together as the foundation of the unit that captured the chalice in 1997, 1998 and 2002.
First, there was no cap in place when Shanahan played in Detroit, so no one on that team — or in the NHL — saw his salary artificially reduced by the CBA. No one on that team had his take-home pay reduced by a 12-17 percent escrow bite. The Red Wings paid what they wanted to amass a powerhouse, just as the Rangers of that era paid what they wanted to amass, well, something else.
Plus, Shanahan seems to misremember the circumstances under which the Red Wings’ best player — the best player in the NHL, in fact — suited up for the 1998 Cup repeat run. That would have been Sergei Fedorov, who remained unsigned into late February until the Hurricanes presented No. 91 with a six-year, $38 million Group II offer sheet that called for a $14 million signing bonus and a $12 million bonus if the team advanced to the conference finals.
The Red Wings matched the poison-pill offer and thus paid Fedorov — who should have won the ’98 Conn Smythe that instead was awarded to sentimental favorite son Steve Yzerman — $28 million that year, in which he played 21 games in the regular season and 22 more in the playoffs. Of course, Fedorov would play for $2 million each of the next five years, but most certainly not as a consequence of accommodating the Red Wings.
And how did Shanahan happen to get to Detroit? Why, by forcing a trade out of Hartford, where he’d been traded a year earlier from St. Louis. And, pray tell, how did Shanahan happen to be wearing the blue note? Why, by signing an offer sheet with the Blues after spending his first four seasons with the Devils.
Listen, we get it. The addition of John Tavares at $11 million per has created a situation in which the young nucleus likely will have to take somewhat less than desired in order to keep the team intact. But that sure shouldn’t be anyone’s obligation. It’s not the players’ responsibility to manage the owners’ cap. In Toronto, that’s the responsibility of Shanahan and general manager Kyle Dubas.
And if they can’t get Nylander in by the Dec. 1 signing deadline, they will have to trade him, no matter what TV commentator Phineas T. Bluster — er, Brian Burke — thinks about it.
This isn’t to suggest that Nylander, the most expendable of the young triumvirate, is worth what he is asking on a second contract. In the grand scheme of things, Toronto’s offer may be eminently fair. Numbers have not leaked on the proposal or player’s asking price. Nylander has an agent, but his dad, Michael, is surely driving the bus here. It is, however, unfair to frame the current standoff within the context of players having the responsibility to take less if they want to play for a winner.
Because that’s not the way it was 20 years ago in Detroit, even if Shanahan romantically remembers it that way.
The NHL established a precedent by suspending serial headhunter Tom Wilson for 20 games in the wake of his malevolent headshot against Oskar Sundqvist, and now here comes the NHLPA filing a grievance in order to make sure this precedent does not stand and become settled law.
The union is caught in a bind here as it engages in the effort to get one of its members back onto the ice so he can menace the other 750 or so of its dues-paying members as quickly as possible. Correct me if I’m wrong, but representing this thuggish recidivist who has been suspended four times within his last 105 games hardly seems to benefit the greater good of the PA.
It is time for a reckoning within the union, time for the membership to support severe penalties against the handful of miscreants who threaten the overwhelming majority’s health and livelihood. Time, once and for all, for the union to support outlawing all hits to the head.
So Sergei Bobrovsky, the pending free agent who fancies himself a Carey Price-type eight-year, $84 million contract despite the fact he has a 5-14/.891/3.49 playoff slash line and has allowed three goals or more in each of his past 12 tournament starts for Columbus, didn’t get the start in the Jackets’ opener and why, oh why, does this seem like no good at all could come of John Tortorella’s decision?
Just wondering: Would Henrik Zetterberg’s back have forced him into the league’s twilight zone LTI retirement haven with three deeply discounted years remaining on his contract if the Red Wings weren’t a bottom-feeder? But no circumvention, nothing to see here, deputy Bill Daly says so.
Finally, our industry lost a giant this week with the passing of Dave Anderson, the Gentleman of The Times. When I started my career, I’m not sure what more impressed my father, my first byline/beat or the fact Dave Anderson knew my name. RIP, old friend.
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