As the Nashville Predators undertake another tricky chapter resetting a roster with a handful of veterans and young players working for their next contracts, we take a look back at the tough decisions David Poile faced with three veteran Predators' contracts.
As David Poile learns to enjoy his hard earned retirement, we take a look back at one of the more challenging contract situations the Nashville Predators' former general manager had to navigate back in 2011. With Ryan Sutter, Shea Weber, and Pekka Rinne all needing new deals, Poile knew the team needed the veterans, but getting deals done was a tricky dance.
-“We’re a young team and I’m not sure how good we are right now, but I know we’re going to get better,” Poile said. “We have a lot of pieces in place, but we need to keep Shea Weber, Ryan Suter and Pekka Rinne for us to compete for the Stanley Cup.”
New general manager Barry Trotz watched Poile tiptoe through a potential financial and relational landmine from his position as the Predators' head coach. Now he sits in the front office and experiences the delicate balance of signing contracts and developing players in the hopes of building a Stanley Cup contender in Nashville.
"MUSIC CITY MIRACLE"
Volume 65, Issue 8 November 7, 2011
By Ken Campbell
Jay Feaster feels David Poile’s pain. He really does. And it has nothing to do with the fact they both work in cities where, at some point during your career, you’re going to find yourself jamming your feet into a pair of uncomfortable cowboy boots. No, these two men are inexorably linked by a much different, much more long-term world of hurt.
Feaster, you may recall, won a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 and spent a whole year shining it while his employers were embroiled in labor Armageddon with his employees. Coming out of the lockout and facing a scorched earth landscape, Feaster was less than thrilled to find he suddenly had roughly two months to do deals with goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, defenseman Dan Boyle and right winger Martin St-Louis, the league’s reigning scoring champion and MVP. And even though Vincent Lecavalier didn’t qualify for unrestricted free agency until after the 2005-06 season, as mandated by the new CBA, Feaster felt he had to get Lecavalier under contract. Then, of course, there was Conn Smythe Trophy-winner Brad Richards, who was due to become a restricted free agent after the season.
Feaster could feel the walls closing in, much the way Poile probably does these days. Like Feaster, Poile faces an uncertain future in terms of the financial landscape, and the core of his team is at a contract crossroads. How Poile handles his key signings over the next eight months will determine whether or not the Nashville Predators challenge for a Stanley Cup in the near future or tumble down the pecking order and standings to become a small-market bottom feeder. And depending on what he does with pending unrestricted free agents Pekka Rinne and Ryan Suter and pending restricted free agent Shea Weber, Poile will undoubtedly define his legacy, and perhaps theirs. The three players have been as big a part of Predators history as any player who has ever worn the uniform. Weber finished second in Norris Trophy voting last season, Rinne finished second in Vezina and fourth in Hart Trophy balloting, and Suter is a perennial 35-point defenseman who owns a huge shot and is emerging as a defensive stalwart. Having all three players become this good is great – having them all become free to dictate their own destinies is fraught with peril.
“All of this really plays out of David’s comfort zone,” said an agent who has had many dealings with Poile, “because David is the kind of guy who likes to have his ducks in a row. He likes to have things under control and well managed.”
Poile said he has the support of the Preds ownership group to get deals done with all three, but he’s going to need more than that. Let’s assume Weber accepts his qualifying offer for next season on a one-year deal that would take him to unrestricted free agency in 2013-14. That would put his salary at $7.5 million again next season. As an unrestricted free agent, Suter could ask for the same amount, perhaps slightly more, which is a significant jump from the $3.5 million he’s making this season. As one of the best goalies in the league, Rinne could ask for double his $3.4 million cap hit for this season.
The Predators are the youngest team in the NHL this season. With the exception of winning in the playoffs, they have done absolutely everything right on and off the ice. They finally have stable, local ownership committed to keeping the team in the city. They have savvy business leadership in CEO Jeff Cogan, who worked for the Dallas Stars during their salad days, and Sean Henry, who helped build the Lightning into a Sunbelt success story. The Predators have drafted and cultivated their own talent better than any organization in the NHL and have calm stability in coaching and management. Their first-ever playoff series win last spring has energized the market and they could be on the verge of doing something special, or watching it all collapse like a house of cards.
“We’re a young team and I’m not sure how good we are right now, but I know we’re going to get better,” Poile said. “We have a lot of pieces in place, but we need to keep Shea Weber, Ryan Suter and Pekka Rinne for us to compete for the Stanley Cup.”
Before we go any further, let’s get a couple of things out of the way here. The Predators will not, repeat will not, sign any one of their players, ever, to a front-loaded deal that legally circumvents the salary cap. “We just don’t have the money,” Poile said. In fact, he said that twice. And there’s a pretty good chance the Predators wouldn’t do a deal that would exceed six years, for the simple reason most insurance companies won’t insure player contracts against injury beyond that duration. Which means the New York Islanders face the prospect of signing a lot of their own checks for the final nine years of Rick DiPietro’s 15-year deal.
And from the players’ perspective, they all like each other and love Nashville. They would prefer to stay, but that’s what every athlete says until the dollars start getting in the way. The three are really tight and know they have a good thing going in Nashville, but there’s no evidence to suggest they’re willing to take significant financial haircuts just to keep The Happy Gang together.
Feaster was hoping that would happen in Tampa, but when it came time to divide what was left under the salary cap, Khabibulin signed with Chicago and the Lightning pinned their goaltending hopes on John Grahame. Epic fail, as the kids say. They did sign Boyle, St-Louis, Lecavalier and Richards, but ended up dealing Boyle and Richards away anyway.
“There is no doubt in my mind that, yes, to get what we needed and to get retooled, we were going to have to trade one of the three forwards,” Feaster said with the benefit of hindsight. “I really hoped the guys would take a look around and go, ‘Hey, you know what? This is pretty good. We have a great life here in Tampa. What if we stayed together and won another one? Wouldn’t that be cool?’ I thought what we had going was pretty special. There are a lot worse gigs than working in Tampa, Florida.”
One of the problems is every contract the Predators sign is measured in only one way: real dollars. They do not represent a salary cap figure, largely because the salary cap ceiling is meaningless to them. If this situation were only about fitting Weber, Rinne and Suter under the cap, there’s a good chance all three would have already been locked up in long-term deals by now. Where the Washington Capitals, Philadelphia Flyers and now the Buffalo Sabres have to work to jam all their parts under the salary cap, the Predators have to jam all their players into a budget. That does give the Predators an advantage in that they aren’t constrained by the salary cap, but it’s one they don’t have the luxury of using.
“In a salary cap system, you have every individual fighting for his piece of the pie,” said Kevin Epp, the agent who represents Weber, “but if you’re not working with a full pie – you’re only working with half a pie or three-quarters of a pie – the piece you get might be smaller.”
Poile won’t argue that point. He’s the GM of the Nashville Predators and he gets that the playing field is not an even one. Lord knows, he hears about it enough. And while he concedes the pie isn’t as big in Nashville, the home cooking there leaves players more satisfied than it does elsewhere. And he’s right. Tennessee is one of nine states in the union where there is no state income tax. In terms of large cities, Nashville is one of the cheapest ones to inhabit in the country (see accompanying chart). Plus, the way he sees it, all three players are going to get their money, so then it comes down to important issues such as trust and loyalty. Can he convince Weber, Rinne and Suter the organization will do everything within its power to continue to be a contender? Will the players believe him? In reality, the Predators have already cleared the decks in many ways, shedding themselves of veterans Steve Sullivan, J-P Dumont, Joel Ward, Marcel Goc and Shane O’Brien, so the will to make it work is there. And what better way would there be to convince Weber they’re serious about contending than by re-signing Suter and Rinne before they become UFAs this summer?
But it’s not that simple, Epp points out. What if revenues tumble because of forces out of everyone’s control? What would likely happen is the Predators would have to shed players to avoid taking on too much water and sinking. Their owners are not a bunch of billionaires doing this as a hobby. They’re a group of civic-minded citizens who believe having a pro sports team in the city is good for everyone. But that kind of benevolence can only go so far. And as Epp points out, there’s nothing to guarantee the Predators will spend their extra money wisely, if at all. He uses Rinne as an example.
“Let’s say Pekka says, ‘I’ll take less to play here.’ What’s to say they’re going to spend the money Pekka didn’t take on the open market and use it to go get a player to put them over the top?” Epp said. “What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does ownership go out and spend some money on some top guys to improve the team and show the guys they’re committed to being the best team they can be by spending more money, or do they convince the players there to take less so they can go and spend more?”
Well, one way to do it would be to get Weber, Suter and Rinne and their respective agents Epp, Neil Sheehy and Jay Grossman in a room together to determine each other’s worth. Don’t laugh. Feaster tried to do the same thing when he was faced with the same issue in Tampa. He told the agents individually he would be happy to show them exactly what the team’s contractual obligations were and how much room they had under the salary cap going forward.
“I said, ‘You guys decide how to split it up, you tell me. And whatever you tell me, I’ll sign your guys to those deals,’ “Feaster said. “Of course, nobody was really interested in doing that at the time.”
Complicating matters is these negotiations are being held with players who have feelings and have strong senses of their worth. There is no doubt there were some hard feelings last summer when the Predators took Weber to arbitration. They did it because it was their right under the collective bargaining agreement, the same way it will be Suter’s and Rinne’s right to walk after this season, and Weber’s after next season, for any reason they like. But Poile also did it to insure the Predators did not become the hunted by falling victim to an offer sheet from another team that they would have had to either match or risk losing Weber in exchange for four first round picks. Remember, Poile did the same thing with Scott Stevens when he was with the Washington Capitals and all Stevens did was go on to forge a Hall of Fame career with another franchise.
Nobody, not Epp, not Poile, not even Weber himself, ever thought it would actually get to a ruling. It was a disaster. Even Poile admits that now. The Predators submitted a contract offer of just $4.75 million and were forced to argue in the hearing why their captain, cornerstone and Norris Trophy runner-up deserved to be the 28th-highest paid defenseman in the league. Weber countered with a one-year stipend of $8.5 million and he hit a home run by being awarded $7.5 million.
Had the Predators been able to get a long-term deal done with Weber, they would have been able to use it as a point of reference in their dealings with both Suter and Rinne. But now the pressure is off Weber because he can simply put himself in a position to become an unrestricted free agent in 2013-14 by taking the Predators’ $7.5 million qualifying offer. The team cannot take him to arbitration again, but Weber can file if he chooses, which he likely won’t. And there’s little doubt as prepared as players are for the process and as much as they understand it’s a business, it affects players far more than it does the franchise.
Teams go through arbitration all the time and can be cold and calculating about it, but players are human beings who usually only go through what can be a confrontational and cantankerous process once.
“Nothing went the way we wanted it go last summer,” Poile said. “Our goal was to sign a long-term contract. It’s absolutely not the way I had hoped we would ever be going with our captain. It was absolutely the worst possible scenario that could happen for us.”
So you can add “soothing the relationship with Weber” as one of the many moving parts to this machine. Nothing about any of this is simple, right down to what the Predators will do about their revenue sharing money, dollars they rely on for their survival. For example, the Predators are currently sitting with a payroll of about $51.4 million, which is $4.9 million below the cap mid-point of $56.3 million. That means, in addition to the other revenue-sharing money they receive from the league, they also receive a check for $4.9 million if they stay at that level through the season because the league pays teams dollar-for-dollar, regardless of their revenues, for every dollar they spend below the mid-point.
If the Predators step up and sign all three players, they can likely kiss that little windfall goodbye. Then again, nobody knows what form revenue sharing is going to take in the next CBA anyway, which simply throws another bunch of uncertainty into the mix. Oh yes, we haven’t even talked about the possibility of a salary rollback akin to the 24 percent hit the players took across the board in the last round of negotiations.
At some point in dealing with these players, the Nashville Predators are going to have to decide what they want to be when they grow up. Do they want to be a team that spends what it takes to be a Stanley Cup contender? If they can’t, the best thing to do would be to start moving their players sooner rather than later. Rinne’s and Suter’s value on the trade market is only going to go down as the deadline approaches – just ask the Atlanta Thrashers, who got Colby Armstrong, Angelo Esposito, Erik Christensen and a 2008 first round pick (Daultan Leveille) from Pittsburgh for Marian Hossa, with Pascal Dupuis also included.
Former GM and current TSN analyst Craig Button said the Predators have to decide whether they want to be the Tampa Bay Rays, who are clear on drafting and developing players with the full realization they’re going to have to lose them once they can no longer afford to meet their demands. They did that last off-season when they allowed Carl Crawford to sign with the Boston Red Sox and essentially cleaned out the Chicago Cubs farm system by dealing former American League Championship Series MVP Matt Garza to them.
The Crawford contract is shaping up as one of the worst in MLB history, while Garza went just 10-10 for the Cubs this season. The Rays, meanwhile, earned the wild card in the American League.
If the Predators come to the same conclusions, Button said it would be best to be proactive and cut a really good deal right away, the way Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher did when he dealt Brent Burns to the San Jose Sharks for Devin Setoguchi, prospect Charlie Coyle and a 2011 first round pick (Zack Phillips).
“You can go one way or the other,” Button said, “but the worst place to be is in between.”
Actually, the worst place is David Poile’s chair in the Nashville Predators office. He is one of the top GMs in the NHL. He has a ton of integrity, has earned his respect with good work and those who negotiate with him know exactly where he stands. He has been in this business for the better part of three decades and he’ll need all his experience, resolve and creativity to make this turn out. And he’ll probably have to work harder than he ever has in his career.