Sedins, No Trade Times Two

So the Sedin brothers are asking for 12 year contracts with an annual cap hit of $5.3 per player, per season. I love them as hockey players, and they would look great in the Leafs blue and white, but I wouldn’t touch that deal with a ten foot pole.

The $5.3 million per season is a good number. It would be an advantage to the club next year, likely a bit of a pain for a year or two while the league cap number goes down, and then again a good number for a couple more years until their age catches up to them, or they run into injuries. After that you’d have a cap hit of over $10 million per year tied up on two players who are approaching age 40 and who can not be traded.

I’ve heard the argument that the cap will be way up by then, but I must have missed the guaranteed economic forecast for 10 years out, and the guarantees on NHL revenues when we still have struggling teams in the sun belt. Though I must admit that Balsillie / Bettman court case should be dying down by then, maybe.

The point that really concerns me about any deal with the Sedins is that you have to take both of them. Sure I’d love to have both of them on my team today, but what I have a major push back on is that I have to take them as a package.

With the Sedins looking upon themselves as a package, they are basically demanding two no trade contracts since the contracts that they sign will not allow them to be split up. Would I consider a 12 year no trade contract for any one person? Well, maybe Zetterberg, but maybe not. But I definitely would not consider a 12 year no trade contract for two players.

Being in Leaf country, we have all lived through the pain of no trade contracts when they start to go bad. The Leafs have wanted to move Tucker, Kaberle, Sundin and Kubina recently in deals that would have greatly helped the team. If these four did not have no trade contracts the Leafs would likely have Mike Richards, Chris Higgins, additional high draft picks, whatever San Jose was going to pay for Kubina and not have Tucker on the books for another three years at $1 million dollars each. We’d have more youth today and Burke would be looking at next weeks draft with may more cards to play. None of those trades were possible because each of these players had no trade contracts.

I’ve read suggestions that a five year deal at a slightly higher cap hit would be worth doing with the brothers. Maybe I’d look at it since they’d only be 33 by the time the deal ends, but I think I’d take a pass on it simply because I think we have to make a break with no trade contracts if possible. The Kaberle and McCabe contracts looked good in their day too, but you can’t project how your team will change and what you may want to do over that length of time.

It was great to hear the Niedermayer brothers’ attitude towards playing together. They said that they’d love to continue playing on the same team, but they realize that it may not be possible so they will play wherever their careers take them.

In today’s salary cap NHL, I don’t think you can afford to tie up that much money on two players that you can’t move. My suggestion is pass on the Sedins, and if we want a brother act in Toronto, let’s go get Brayden Schenn.