THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Marian Hossa

Last year, Marian Hossa turned down a reported a 12-yr 92MM deal to sign a one year deal with the Redwings at 7.45 MM:

“I have never been involved in a deal and seen a player get so excited to take $85 million less than he was offered elsewhere,” Winter told The Canadian Press. “It’s almost incomprehensible, even to an agent. But Marian is a special player.”

He went from the Cup-losing Penguins in 2008 to play with the Cup-losing Redwings in 2009.  (The Redwings won in 2008 and the Penguins won in 2009.  Talk about bad luck.)

Anyway, this year he signs with the up-and-coming Blackhawks (shades of the Penguins) for 12 years and 63MM.  That makes his take including this past season as 13 years and 70MM.  Hossa took a 22MM pay cut from last year, even though he had a great season (Cup finals notwithstanding).  Such is life in the new world economy.

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The Blackhawks by the way, pulled a Lou Lamoriello.  A few years ago, Lamoriello, often considered the best GM in North American sports, messed up by not properly tendering an offer to John Madden and Brian Rafalski; the result was unrestricted free agency for both.  Both however signed with the Devils (at a deal far higher than they would have gotten pre-boneheaded move, but still less than what free agency would have offered).  Now, Chicago is in the same boat.  They messed up on seven of their players, though six have now resigned.  Their standout rookie Versteeg is still in negotiations.  Their case to be declared free agents has been filed, and we’ll see the result soon enough:

The National Hockey League Players Association filed a grievance Monday over the Hawks’ handling of the qualifying offers. If the NHL rejects the grievance, the matter will go to an arbitrator. At that point, it would be possible for Versteeg to be declared an unrestricted free agent, and the Hawks could lose the talented, young forward on the open market.

But Versteeg’s agent David Kaye said he doesn’t want it to get to that point.

“We’ve been negotiating with Chicago fairly regularly here, and I expect hopefully something will get done in the next few days,” Kaye said Tuesday.

When asked if it’s possible a deal will be reached Tuesday, Kaye said: “You never know. You know how negotiations are.”

Kaye said he has no idea what the timeline would be for the arbitration process. He also preferred not to discuss the Blackhawks’ apparent paperwork error that led to this point.

“I don’t want to get into it right now,” he said. “We’re in the middle of negotiations. We’ve been negotiating on an ongoing basis.”

The NHL is a bit different in that their young players don’t have to suffer as much as MLB players in getting a fair compensation before hitting free agency.  So, non-tendering say Longoria or Papelbon would have had a dramatic impact to their salaries.  In the NHL, the Hawks’ flub, while costly, isn’t the killer that it would have been with MLB.