Wings' Devellano: On Bettman, owners' stance, players should be grateful...

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Captain Bob

Which is why you should also understand that the owners' demands for longer ELCs and more years until UFA is completely useless, because... regardless of whether a 1st year, 4th year, 7th year or 10th year player makes, players get the set percent of revenues...

So all this crying about early UFA or 4 year ELC is just idiocy

Great! Then there's no reason to keep them around at all - everybody can be a free agent coming out of junior.

[middletoe]

Originally Posted by Retail1LO

I say let them have contract lengths as long as they like. Just make the cap hits the same as the annual pay out...and get rid of guaranteed contracts. That's why the players love the length. GUARANTEED. Retirement contracts. Meaning...you can retire before your contract is up. You can go into Alex Semin mode the before the ink's even dry. You don't want 57-43% in favor of ownership? No problem. 50-50 is all yours. Oh yeah. Contracts not guaranteed. If I'm the owners, I offer the players the world and take back just that one thing. Or...give them the guaranteed contracts and get whatever you need everywhere else to feel comfortable. Guaranteed contracts. I wish MY salary was guaranteed regardless of my performance. lol

Kind of a late response here. I'm not sure what to think about not guaranteeing contracts; really tricky. As a player I would be less apt to want to do what the team wants me to do for the good of the team. I wouldn't be happy about feeling this way, but my wife and kids have to come before anything else. You'd be putting a lot more faith in your coaches than you might be comfortable with.

Without giving it as much thought as it needs, I think I'd prefer what I suggested. Guaranteed contracts, but maximum of something like 3, with the right to negotiate an extension to the max of 3 after every season.

[The Zetterberg Era]

Originally Posted by middletoe

Kind of a late response here. I'm not sure what to think about not guaranteeing contracts; really tricky. As a player I would be less apt to want to do what the team wants me to do for the good of the team. I wouldn't be happy about feeling this way, but my wife and kids have to come before anything else. You'd be putting a lot more faith in your coaches than you might be comfortable with.

Without giving it as much thought as it needs, I think I'd prefer what I suggested. Guaranteed contracts, but maximum of something like 3, with the right to negotiate an extension to the max of 3 after every season.

Well than I guess the NHLPA should stop threatening overseas, because you know what they don't have by in large. Guaranteed contracts.