Foursome of RFA defensemen playing contract waiting game with training camp on horizon

Four high-profile young defensemen, including the Edmonton Oilers' Darnell Nurse and Calgary Flames' Noah Hanifin, remain without contracts for next season, and they're stuck playing the waiting game.

While the hockey world waits to hear about the fates of high-profile restricted free agents William Nylander and Sam Reinhart with three weeks left to go before training camp, there’s an interesting dynamic playing out among four young defensemen who still have yet to sign their second NHL contracts.

Noah Hanifin of the Calgary Flames, Josh Morrissey of the Winnipeg Jets, Darnell Nurse of the Edmonton Oilers and Shea Theodore of the Vegas Golden Knights are all restricted free agents who have yet to sign contracts with their respective teams. Not only that, they’re essentially all in the same snack bracket when it comes to their potential contract values. With the exception of Hanifin, all play more than 20 minutes a game. All four are regarded as promising defensemen with bright futures and only six points separated the four in terms of offensive production last season.

There’s a pretty good chance all four will be under contract when training camp begins in mid-September, but that is certainly not a given. And it will be interesting to see what kinds of contracts the four players get. But what will be most intriguing about the group is which one of them will break the logjam by signing first. There’s little doubt that the agents for the four players – Anton Thun (Nurse), Gerry Johansson (Morrissey), Craig Oster (Theodore) and Pat Brisson (Hanifin) will be watching closely to see when the others sign and for how much.

“There is a little bit of waiting for the shoe to drop,” Thun said. “You have a group of guys who are all in the same basket and one expedites the others. It’s kind of like the draft when you wait for a goalie to be taken and then there are five taken in the next seven picks.”

In a perfect world, all four teams would tie up these assets with long-term deals, but that’s not terribly likely. In fact, it would not be a surprise to see none of them go beyond a bridge deal at this point. There have not been many defensemen in the past couple of years who have come out of their entry-level deals and signed long-term contracts, with the exception of Seth Jones, who signed a six-year deal worth $5.4 million a season two years ago, and Michael Matheson, who re-upped with the Florida Panthers for eight years at $4.9 million per season last summer.

Part of the reason for that is uncertainty on both sides, but the last thing a player wants to do is to be underpaid on a long-term deal. That’s what happened to Roman Josi, who signed a seven-year deal worth just $4 million a year in 2013, teammate Ryan Ellis who signed a five-year deal worth $2.25 million a year and John Klingberg, who inked seven-year deal worth $4.25 million in 2015.

Much of what these players get will be determined by how long their deals are. Chances are, the players would get something in the $3 million-to-$4 million range on a two-year bridge deal, with anything long-term being somewhere in the $5 million-plus range.

It’s unfortunate because the players involved have spent a summer of uncertainty and one or more may have to miss some of training camp, which is crucial for the development of a young player, because he couldn’t come to terms. This, of course, could be rectified by giving entry-level players arbitration rights that older players receive, but the league is not on board with the concept. Had arbitration been available to these four players, they likely would have filed moments after arbitration-eligible players such as Brandon Montour, Brady Skjei and Matt Dumba did and they would all be under contract by now.

So instead, we wait and they wait. All four of them seem to be having dialogue and are confident deals will get done in time. Thun said he has been in constant contact with the Oilers regarding Nurse, but the numbers don’t line up at the moment. He acknowledged the two sides have only discussed a bridge deal to this point, but the injury to Andrej Sekera, who is likely to miss at least 60 games with a torn Achilles, could open up some cap room that might make it possible for the Oilers to sign Nurse to a long-term contract.

Thun’s approach is pretty typical when it comes to which of these players is going to sign first.

“I would think the first one won’t be Darnell Nurse,” Thun said. “But that could all change with one phone call.”