Step right up, Sam Reinhart. You are the next contestant in the Pending Unrestricted Free Agent Spotlight Festival.
William Nylander sent you the baton via UPS last week.
Like Nylander, Reinhart is having a monster, career season just at the right time, albeit without the center-of-the-hockey-universe media coverage giving it a daily narrative.
Still, Reinhart is the highest-scoring pending UFA forward, with 31 goals and a shot at making it to 60 in his ninth NHL season. This after scoring 33 (his career high) and 31 goals the past two seasons.
His timing has been rather perfect.
Having said that, from having made a few inquiries on the matter, there is not a showdown feel to this situation. Reinhart really, really wants to stay in South Florida and understands what that means. He just wants a fair deal.
There have been very preliminary, general discussions between Panthers management and Reinhart’s camp, led by agent Craig Oster from Newport Sports, but from what I understand, the meat of the negotiations has not gotten underway just yet.
Two factors to consider in why an extension with the Panthers doesn’t look like it’d be at the number Reinhart might expect on the open market July 1:
1. What do Florida, Tampa, Nashville, Dallas and Vegas all have in common? They’re all desirable, no-state-income-tax NHL markets where players take a bit less than market value. It’s an advantage for those teams, to be sure. Not a single player on the Knights, Lightning, Panthers, Stars or Predators makes more than $10 million a year:
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Nikita Kucherov, Braydon Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy all top the Bolts’ payroll at $9.5 million. Jack Eichel tops Vegas at $10 million but that was an inherited contract from Buffalo; Mark Stone is the highest-paid cap hit signed by the Knights at $9.5 million. Tyler Seguin tops the Stars’ payroll at $9.85 million (Miro Heiskanen signed at $8.45 million through 2028-29 is highway robbery!). And Roman Josi tops the Predators at $9.05 million.
That brings us to the Panthers, who have Aleksander Barkov ($10 million), Sergei Bobrovsky ($10 million) and Matthew Tkachuk ($9.5 million) at the top of their cap chart. I could be wrong, but I’m confident in saying I think a Reinhart extension would need to fit under Tkachuk.
2. The second factor here: The Panthers under GM Bill Zito are trying to build a sustainable product that takes several shots at the Stanley Cup, so they’re looking for maximum cap flexibility and looking for player buy-in, much like their cousins in Tampa Bay have established over the years. So even if Reinhart could potentially fetch $10 million to $11 million a year on the market July 1 given his monster production, and given how thin the UFA forward market is shaping up to be, that’s just not a number that’s realistic if he’s going to remain in South Florida.
At least I don’t think so.
There’s also this: I think term will matter to Reinhart. He’s 28 years old, so this is likely his last big contract moment, and he’s never gotten term before. He came out of his entry-level deal in Buffalo and signed a two-year, $7.3 million deal in September 2018, followed by a one-year, $5.2 million contract in October 2020, then signed a three-year, $19.5 million with the Panthers in August 2021, a month after his trade acquisition.
Point being that term and the peace of mind that would come with it might be a nice exchange for taking less AAV than his market worth.
Either way, I foresee Reinhart staying put in South Florida.
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