{"id":483043,"date":"2026-10-02T19:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483043\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T19:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:12:11","slug":"when-signing-an-rfa-to-a-long-term-deal-can-be-the-wrong-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483043\/","title":{"rendered":"When signing an RFA to a long-term deal can be the wrong call"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Tristan Luneau<\/a> signed a six-year, $43.2 million<\/a> contract with the Anaheim Ducks<\/a>, I had the type of small panic that\u2019s uncommon in my line of work: \u201cOh my god,\u201d I thought, \u201chow could I not know more about a player worth 40 million dollars?\u201d<\/p>\n

The NHL is huge, spanning 32 teams with 23-man rosters, and my job is to know everyone encapsulated by those numbers, plus a few more. At least I should be aware of all the fringe guys on each team, and maybe know a tidbit or two about some of these lesser-known players. But for somebody whose name I only sort of recognize to sign a long-term deal at over $7 million per season, it felt like I was about to be exposed as a fraud. How could I miss such a big fish?<\/p>\n

I opened my laptop, sent a few texts, and here we are. He\u2019s 22 years old, a hair over league average size, and was supposed to be a big part of Team Canada\u2019s world junior team in 2024 before a viral infection kept him out (that bit I vaguely recalled). He\u2019s a right-shot defenceman who was drafted in the second round, and he\u2019s had two years in the AHL putting up nice point totals — really nice actually: he was nearly at a point per game two years ago, and had 41 points in 70 games last season.<\/p>\n

Still, this contract seemed crazy, until I thought\u2026 and then I really thought\u2026 and then I thought some more… <\/p>\n

…and, wait: this deal IS crazy. I was with the Marlies when we had a 6-foot-4, 21-year-old, right-shot defenceman named Andrew Nielsen who put up nearly that exact stat line as Luneau, and I only mention that to show minor league success is no guarantee of the same in the NHL. Nielsen was a great player there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In sum, I was this old Simpsons meme:<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Just replace \u201cchildren\u201d with \u201cNHL GMs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What are the Ducks doing here? What is everyone doing?<\/p>\n

The point of betting on someone before they hit isn\u2019t to pay them\u00a0fairly\u00a0if they break out,\u00a0it\u2019s to get out-sized value after taking such a massive risk with your cap hit (and real dollars) early, and with that roster spot for years to come. You\u2019re supposed to be trading young players\u00a0job\u00a0security in exchange for dollar savings. You\u2019re not supposed to just offer them job security, hope they hit your lofty projections, and then pay them fairly for those outcomes.<\/p>\n

Luneau is indeed supposed to be a very good NHL player, and like Zeev Buium<\/a> in Vancouver, is forecast to produce points from the back-end at that level. People I\u2019ve talked to like Luneau.\u00a0But, he obviously hasn\u2019t proven capable of doing that in the NHL yet, because he\u2019s only been granted 14 games (stuck behind a lot of veteran defencemen last year), and racked up two goals and two assists for four points.<\/p>\n

\"RealReal Kyper and Bourne<\/p>\n

Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne talk all things hockey with some of the biggest names in the game. Watch live every weekday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ \u2014 or listen live on Sportsnet 590 The FAN \u2014 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n

Full episode<\/a><\/p>\n

If Luneau were just getting paid for what he\u2019s expected to do when this contract begins in 2027-28, one assumes that number would be closer $2-3 million, depending on how this season goes. He\u2019s RFA age. Maybe he\u2019ll be awesome this year and that number ends up being four, or somehow five. But regardless, until he proves he\u2019s in the upper echelon of point-producing defencemen, his real value in the next couple seasons is probably less than the number he\u2019s now signed for…and probably by a good bit.<\/p>\n

So he has work to do just to earn this contract, but then he has to provide\u00a0more\u00a0value later in the deal than the $7.2 million he’ll be making, and that\u2019s just to get back to level. For the Ducks to get potential value out of this risk, Luneau has to play like an $11-plus million defenceman for a couple years. And while that\u2019s possible, it\u2019s not a savvy bet — it\u2019s a flat-out slot-machine level gamble on a player\u2019s ceiling. Consider how far he\u2019d have to surpass that level to offer real savings.<\/p>\n

The Ducks also gambled like this to a lesser degree with Pavel Mintyukov<\/a>, who should be very good too, but what Mintyukov will eventually become is still very much up in the air.\u00a0(Around the league, similar bets were made on Simon Nemec and Buium.)<\/p>\n

I get that coming out of the Leo Carlsson<\/a> offer sheet the Ducks didn\u2019t want to be left with other teams dictating the terms for their players, but that doesn\u2019t require a commitment of such magnitude. Were I cute and punny, I might suggest it were overcompensation.<\/p>\n

More generally though, I think we\u2019re seeing what happens when a strategy of the proactive teams gets adopted by the masses — they know what it looks like, but they don\u2019t really understand the premise of why the action is being taken. Just like teams acquired \u201canalytics people\u201d in recent years, the late adopters typically didn\u2019t understand why they had hired these types or what it was they were trying to do, they just didn\u2019t want to look archaic. They couldn\u2019t extract value from it.<\/p>\n

In this case it seems like teams have noticed the great value Carolina has in the Logan Stankoven<\/a> and Jackson Blake<\/a> deals, and took away the lesson \u201cgo long early\u201d and missed the ideas about when to do it and why. These two players had already shown they could contribute at the NHL level, and right as they were popping, they got their contracts locked down. But signs that they would pop at the NHL level came first.<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes the salary cap has gone up, and should continue to go up considerably. Yes you can buy out the contract of players under 26 for one-third of their value. This part in particular is a popular defence of these contracts, which should tell you a little something about them: \u201cAh, you can buy it out for a bargain\u201d is a weird contract defence.<\/p>\n

I recognize that in five years a lot of these deals will look just fine. Defencemen making what Luneau will only need to be about second-pair guys to be paid fairly in a few years. But outside of the league-leading defencemen, it\u2019s hard to see these recent deals providing much in the way of total value.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019d also like to add: Good for the players, I don\u2019t blame them one bit for signing these deals, and none of this is criticism of their play or potential. Get that money, man.<\/p>\n

But the part I keep getting hung up on in my head, is just \u2026 who are they bidding against with these numbers? Did one offer sheet this summer imply that we were going to see an onslaught of 10 more? Luneau\u2019s never spent a month in the NHL, and yet $7.2 million was as low as he would\u2019ve signed for?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if that were the case (the ultimate \u201cbet on yourself\u201d), let\u2019s say you know you want to lock him up for real term: how is that six years and not four? Or even three? Five takes him to UFA, but four keeps you in control and allows you to get several years out of him at presumably something more like $4 million per. It\u2019s still a risk, but if \u2013 and it\u2019s a big if \u2013 he hits as a star, you\u2019ll then be able to lock that player up for a bigger piece of their career. Even going big on the next two years after a four-year deal (if you want to compare how much it would cost over those six seasons) would keep the six-year-total in a similar ballpark, but then you\u2019d have the chance to lock up this \u201cstar\u201d for many more years, negotiating with an RFA.<\/p>\n

When teams are punished for waiting \u2013 a la Carlsson \u2013 it\u2019s usually on guys who we\u2019re sure are stars because they\u2019ve shown it. Simon Edvinsson<\/a> has shown he can play top pair minutes in the NHL, and Detroit waited while trying to play hardball — which is what you\u2019re not supposed to do — and have only seen the cost of his contract go through the roof as kids like Luneau sign.<\/p>\n

If a player has shown they can do it at the NHL level, go for it. Even if it\u2019s a small sample, but you believe in them and you\u2019ve seen flashes of it, you\u2019re good. Go for it. But if you\u2019re betting on the pedigree that got them to the league, pump the brakes.<\/p>\n

NHL GMs reacted to the Carlsson offer sheet and dollar amount by collectively setting their hair on fire and shovelling money at any kid in their organization with potential. Many of them are going to wind up with good value deals out of it, just by the sheer math of prospects and where the cap is going. But they\u2019ve missed the chance to find value, and locked themselves into players we\u2019re not sure about yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a game where we play a lot of probabilities and take some chances, this is the most we\u2019ve seen it happen off the ice. GMs have gone on offence, and they\u2019re just hoping for it to bounce their way. They might want to ask their coaches how they feel about playing \u201chope\u201d hockey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Tristan Luneau signed a six-year, $43.2 million contract with the Anaheim Ducks, I had the type of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-483043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}