The restricted free agent still has no new contract less than two weeks before the start of training camp. What’s the hold-up?
In life, there are hard deadlines, the ones you have zero wiggle room on to make something happen, and soft deadlines, the ones you want to hit but know can be flexed given your circumstances and other priorities. The NHL works much the same way when it comes to signing contracts for the season.
Hard deadlines are those marked on the calendar that have specific restrictions if not met: trade deadline (can’t move a contract after that date in the current season), free agency (can’t sign an unrestricted free agent before that window opens), and December 1, where restricted free agents have to be signed by in order to play that season.
So, for the Ottawa Senators and the agent of RFA forward Shane Pinto, December 1 is that hard deadline to get a new contract done.
However, there are some soft deadlines approaching to be cognizant of. Most coaches will want their roster in training camp, which opens across the league on September 20th (usually with medicals and off-ice stuff like social media filming, headshots, etc.) and the first official on-ice sessions following the next day. The next soft deadline after that is opening night, which for the Senators, would be October 11th when they take on the Carolina Hurricanes on the road.
The fact that Pinto is still unsigned less than two weeks in advance of training camp opening isn’t exactly a time to panic, but it’s also not not a time to panic, either. Luckily, the pressure of that first soft deadline approaching should help create some movement on the negotiation front with both sides reportedly far apart.
What is Pinto looking for in this next contract? Without arbitration rights or enough experience to even be eligible to get an offer sheet from another team, his leverage is basically down to his lack of participation in team activities. Given the cap situation and his lack of proven history at the NHL level, his camp is likely looking for a bridge deal that could get him a significant pay day down the line with the cap ceiling increases for the first time in seemingly ever. Using CapFriendly’s comparable contract tool, you can see that similar bridge deals for a middle-six center like Pinto has been so far puts his cap hit somewhere in the $2.5 million to $3.0 million range, with comparables of Alex Newhook’s four-year, $2.9 million deal and Noah Cates’ two-year, $2.625 million deal as reference points.
That would be a not-insignificant cap hit for the Senators to fit in. Add to it that fellow teammate and RFA Egor Sokolov is also still waiting for a new contract, though he’s likely looking at a two-way deal with a cap hit somewhere under $1 million. So somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million or so that needs to be added to the cap picture for the Senators to ice a full lineup this year.
The salary cap is tight for many teams across the league — 21 of 32 teams have less than $1 million in space, with 14 of those already over and needing to shed salary. Ottawa has about $895,000 in cap space to work with to sign both players without needing to move out a contract. What’s particularly vexing about the cap situation is all of the dead money on the books. Retaining $1.5 million on Matt Murray’s trade. A combined $3.5 million in buyouts from the Bobby Ryan, Michael del Zotto, and Colin White contracts. It’s hard to see where the money to fit both Sokolov and Pinto under the cap is going to come from, as there aren’t any immediate trade candidates that jump off the page, either.
Luckily, Pierre Dorion is paid the big bucks to figure that out.
He won’t be the only general manager in the NHL still working on deals this late into the offseason, either. Several high-profile RFAs across the league are still without contracts this close to training camp, including Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale from the Anaheim Ducks and Calen Addison of the Minnesota Wild. Anaheim has plenty of space to work with, but the Wild might find themselves in a similar camp as the Senators with a lot of dead cap space to work around in their buyouts of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise.