McMichael files for arbitration

[TAFKAP]

I hope this is just stalling to get the deal done because arb is just for a one year deal. He'll be more expesive next year if he's as good as we hoped.

Arbitration awards can be both a one year OR a two year deal. Hockey is different from other sports.

Cool, thanks for the info.

[TruBlueFan_1970]

If this is the going rate, guessing McMichael will have a good argument for McTavish money. One decent season and he gets $6.25m. Same position, age and similar draft pedigree. McMichael has been much more productive. I may not like it, but I’m getting to the point where I’m looking for him to get $7-7.5m and probably for 3-4 years or wherever the Blues are comfortable.

https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/free-age ... h-penguins

[STL fan in MN]

I hope this is just stalling to get the deal done because arb is just for a one year deal. He'll be more expesive next year if he's as good as we hoped.

Arbitration can result in a 1 or 2 year contract. The party that doesn’t file gets to choose the length. That said, McMichael is 2 years away from UFA status so the Blues would clearly choose 1 year.

But around 90-95% of players that file for arbitration come to an agreement before the hearing. This will just give him and the Blues a drop dead date they need to come to a deal by to avoid an arbitration hearing.

That's kind of what I figured, that he was buying time with an end date. I thought he was 1 year away from UFA, thanks for clarifying.

Yeah, that’s the one exception with the 1 vs 2 year choice. If a player is only 1 year away from UFA status then the team can’t select 2 years; it’d have to be 1 year.

[STL fan in MN]

If this is the going rate, guessing McMichael will have a good argument for McTavish money. One decent season and he gets $6.25m. Same position, age and similar draft pedigree. McMichael has been much more productive. I may not like it, but I’m getting to the point where I’m looking for him to get $7-7.5m and probably for 3-4 years or wherever the Blues are comfortable.

https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/free-age ... h-penguins

Yeah, when you look at the recent contracts to Chinakhov, Bourque, Mintyukov etc, they all point to a range around $6.5-7M IMO. I’d like to see it at $6.5M. Lower if possible but that’s probably unlikely.

Puckpedia has a comparables feature:
https://comparables.puckpedia.com/explorer/17978


To me, the best comp on that list is probably Mittelstadt. Mittelstadt signed for 3 years at $5.75M at around the same age. But he did so 2 years ago under a different Cap environment. So the more important piece is probably that his contract occupied 6.53% of the Cap at the time. Extrapolate that 6.53% to today’s Cap of $104M and it comes out to $6.791M. So yeah, that seems to be the approx going rate for that sort of player. I’d hope they could get him for more than 3 years if they’re paying that much though.

[BalotelliMassive]

Yeah, when you look at the recent contracts...

Frank Nazar signed a 6.59 x 7 contract a year ago and he had much less time in the league. This guy's getting 7 million imo.

[Army's Mom]

Yeah, when you look at the recent contracts...

Frank Nazar signed a 6.59 x 7 contract a year ago and he had much less time in the league. This guy's getting 7 million imo.

Nazar was a good example of teams getting ahead of the curve on the rising RFA salaries, same as MON. Those contracts all have aged well.