From The Fourth Period (no author given):
Contract negotiations remain ongoing between the Detroit Red Wings and restricted free agent defenceman Simon Edvinsson, who attended training camp but is not longer with the club.
Edvinsson, 23, is believed to be seeking a long-term contract worth at least $9 million to $10 million per season, depending on term.
Red Wings interim GM Shawn Horcoff confirmed to the media earlier today that Edvinsson is not with the club, thought contract talks continue.
“As of today, Simon is not practicing with the team,” Horcoff told Red Wings beat reporter Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press. “The organization will continue conversations with Simon and his representatives.”
Edvinsson and Carolina Hurricanes blueliner Alexander Nikishin remain the two unsigned RFAs in the NHL. While Detroit aims to keep their defenceman, Carolina has been actively trying to trade theirs, at the player’s request.
Pay the man. No bridge deal. Long-term. It will be worth the $ in the long run.
I’ve long been hoping the “bridge deal” is a negotiating subterfuge with the goal of signing a more favorable long term deal. However, I harbor no fantasies that this deal will come in below Mo’s (amazingly team-friendly) number. That is not the state of the cap today, or the extrapolation of the cap into the near future. (I also think the raw $$ numbers are silly, and instead we should be comparing player’s percentage of the full cap on at the time they signed their contracts, but that’s just the engineer in me.)
Your new formatting is going to take some getting used to, GM. I’m happy it’s a move away from your previous mlive and KK digs, though.
The formatting is pretty weird right now, but the newer blog style should minimize outages, and the outages were getting, well, out of hand.
Your words about Edvinsson needing to get signed as a percentage of the cap are wise.