Have against Kane?? Where did I say i was against him?

Edit: Oh I see what you mean. I didn't mean that in a bad way. I meant when he signed that contract he was already a multi cup winner, Conn smythe winner, Calder, pretty much one of the most elite players in the league for more than one year in a row. Also his 10.5M was almost 4-5 years ago now. So with inflation, it would probably look more like 13-14 now. So its hard to look at 10.5M and say Marner is worth 10.25m, you know what i mean?

Yes really. The argument of taxes gets blown out of proportion on here. On a 10m contract it’s less than 1m and when it comes to signing bonuses it can swing the other way.

you misunderstood my point, can afford affects what the team OFFERS. If a team CAN afford to pay a guy a lot of cap space right now, they can OFFER a guy a longer contract(since length is what drives up the aav from whatever the initial value is which is determined by performance), if a team CAN'T afford to give a guy 12million worth of cap space, then they can only offer him a shorter deal in order to get a more affordable cap hit in exchange for less control.

hence why marners value is probably Matthews minus about 1-1.5mil. They are pretty similar but Marner would be a hair less because of some of the reasons you named So if its 5 years that would be 10million(that's actually 1.6mil less than Matthews). But the leafs would be nuts to give both guys the same term and possibly have both walk into ufa at the same time.

Until someone sets the precedent different for an RFA winger coming off an ELC, the highest RFA winger coming off an ELC (outside of Ovechkin 12 years ago and different CBA), is 7.5 million to Tarasenko, and 6.8 million to Johnny Gaudreau (both of which are remarkable comparables to Marner in their contract year). Marner has no leg to stand on to be over 10 million. No one has ever gone anywhere near that for such a player. Only ONE winger who was an RFA has ever gotten more than that 7.5 million, and that was Kucherov, who both played better than Marner (Hart trophy candidate) AND was one year from UFA and arbitration eligible. That gives the player a TONNE more leverage than an RFA coming off their ELC as he can decide to go to arbitration, take his one year deal and go to UFA and the team literally cannot stop him. While not quite a UFA, a lot more leverage than an RFA.

Now if Rantanen signs before Marner I suspect he'll set a new precedent, but the precedent should be ABOVE what Marner gets, as frankly Rantanen has been a fair bit better than Marner over the last two years. Marner and his family can go on and on about how they deserve as much as Matthews, but simply put wingers are not as important as centers (outside of generational talents like Ovi). You cannot build a winning team around a winger. The leafs need to hold firm on this.

Makes sense. I misread your post as you allude too

again it depends on term, if its more than 5 years, 10 is the basement. If its less than 5, I would be shocked if he got 10. Wingers aren't absolute perfect comparisons to centers, doesn't mean you can totally pretend the other contract never occurred. It did, it set the market for many RFAs. I expect Rantanen to sign for a huge contract, not sure who signs first. But I think Rantanen will be for more(partly based on performance but a lot of it is based on I think he will get more term than Marner which will automatically inflate the aav even if it weren't already.)