The Ottawa Senators offered Shane Pinto eight years, but could a short-term deal happen?
Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Hot Starts Around The NHL episode, on the contract situation of the Ottawa Senators and Shane Pinto.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Kyle Bukauskas: “There have been some impressive starts to the season around the league. But as you said, Shane Pinto, that was your biggest item on Headlines on Saturday with Ron. That the Senators had offered him an eight-year contract this past week. How are things between Pinto, who is in the final year of his contract, and the Senators?”
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Friedman: “So as I said Saturday night, and I was trying to get more details on this, I don’t think this means that a deal is close. I don’t think it means we’re on the right track to get it done. But what I do think is that this was the realization by the Ottawa senators that whatever conversations they had were not going to happen, and they had to get more serious. And like I said, I don’t think what this also, that number was the time, it was going to happen but I think at the very least it is a move in a better direction.
The response I got to this was really interesting. I had a manager from another team bet me that this would still be a short-term deal. And the reason he thinks it will be a short-term deal, as I said, is that even though Pinto’s contract expires this year, he has two more seasons until he’s an unrestricted free agent. A lot can happen between now and even two years from now, about where the cap is and where it goes.
And that’s number one on a lot of people’s minds as to why they think it’s going to be tough, because, I mean, look, Ottawa could throw all the money at him, and it could get it done. But I just can’t get on a team with, you know, Brady Tkachuk, on a team with different contracts that they’re going to have to deal with over the next few seasons. I think they realize they can’t do that.
They’ll have to do that, just like Shane Pinto is going to make a lot of money. He is a center in a league starving for centers. He shows a scoring ball. Like he’s a top two center in the NHL. That’s him. And those players, everyone covets them, and they get paid.
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So Ottawa will have to step up at some point. I just really understood this, this guy’s logic that he thinks it’s going to be that much harder for them to get to a long-term deal. Because essentially, if you do eight years, you’re doing two RFA years and six UFA years. And even at that moment, we don’t know where we’re going. So I liked his logic that it would ultimately be a shorter-term deal, but I still think it will be a fairly large number even on a short-term deal.
I’ll tell you what someone else said to me. I found it really interesting. He is represented Pinto by Lewis Gross. The last really big signing he did was (William) Nylander, and it’s a little different because Nylander got unrestricted free agency. But really, when Nylander started his UFA year strong, they just waited and waited and waited until Toronto was in a position where they had to give Nylander what they wanted.
And what a few people said to me was: if Pinto, as no one expects, will score ninety goals this year, but if he continues the way he is doing now, the hammer will tilt further in his direction. Even if he is not an Ufa for a while. So, you know, they said that unless the player gets what he wants, there’s benefit in waiting.
So we’ll see. At the very least, I think Ottawa has gone in a better direction than where it needs to go here.
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Bukauskas: “It’s interesting where, over the course of Pinto’s time in Ottawa. It seems like the negotiations, for example, have been rough. There’s been some friction along the way. I know there was a year where the gambling issue came to the fore. That obviously changed a lot of things. He was trying to get a contract done at the time. I’m not taking that into account here.”
But it seems like things have never been easy between Pinto and the Sens for some strange reason, as he is their most trusted two-way center. Maybe he doesn’t have the offensive numbers of (Tim) Stutzle or (Brady) Tkachuk, but he has scored 20 goals twice. Rather, as a locker room guy, seems pretty low maintenance and a popular teammate.
Just interesting, how I mean you understand, when you look at, okay, where does the cap go? Team wants to do it eight years, of course there will be some time to get something over the finish line. But I thought a little bit about why, especially with Pinto and the Sens, it never seems to have been easy to get anything done between the two parties.”
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