Caps owner Leonsis says 13-year deal was originally only a six-year pact

The Hockey News: Headlines: Caps owner Leonsis says 13-year deal was originally only a six-year pact:

“So the question was, would you sign Alex Ovechkin for seven years for $10 million a year six years from now? And the answer is yes,” explained Leonsis. “So that’s how we came to six years at $9 million and seven years at $10 million. That was the thought process.”

Essentially, it’s two contracts wrapped up into one.

When Ovechkin and his parents walked into the Capitals’ offices Thursday, they fully expected to polish off a six-year deal. Then the Caps unveiled the second part of the deal and found a willing partner. Add up six years at $9 million per season and seven years at $10 million per season and you get $124 million.

“How I looked at it is, we have him until he’s 35 years old, we’ll have him through his best statistical years and his statistics are pretty good right now,” said Leonsis. “And who else would you want as the face of your franchise?”

What we see here is the league inventing a new class of contract. This isn’t the “best player on the team” contract, or the “franchise player” contract — it’s the “face of the franchise” contract. it’s not just for someone who’s a good (okay, great) hockey player, it’s the person you define your franchise with. In some ways, this is a way to counteract the fan complaint that more liberal (and younger) free agency means players move around too much.

Now, teams are taking the option — spawned by the improved financial setup of the salary cap — to take one player and guarantee they’ll be around for a long time. Injury isn’t really a problem; the contracts will be insured. The only risk is you guess wrong, because this isn’t JUST about being a good player, it’s about being a good player AND willing to partner with the team to market and promote it AND be the kind of player you can trust to stay committed to playing and training.

The one assumption made with these contracts is that the financial basis of the game doesn’t shrink radically; in practice, it doesn’t even have to grow much, and if the game does grow, then these players become bargains in later years. If the league falls into financial disaster — these contracts will be a minor part of a bigger crisis, so the actual risk is low.

The reality is, there’s only one of these contracts per franchise — and not all franchises will have a player they want to (or should give) this kind of deal. You can bet some players are going to want it, but teams are going to have to be careful choosing who they sign up. But I think this deal is a good deal for the Caps, just like the DiPietro deal was for the Islanders. And you can bet, franchises are going to screw this up and make the Caps signing of Jagr look like a bargain, and the CBA, as currently structured, makes it hard to get away from something like this. But when those teams do screw up, it shouldn’t be taken as a reason to see all of these deals as bad. Bad deals are bad deals in any form…

I like it. Gutsy. And as long as Ovechkin doesn’t turn into Sergei Samsonov, Leonsis is going to be seen as a genius down the road….

The NFL tried this kind of gambit with their franchise player tag — to keep that key player out of free agency (teams are allowed to declare one player a franchise player, and sign them to a one year deal at least the average of the top five players in the league at that position). In practice, it’s used to grab whatever player is hardest to sign and hogtie them, and so it hasn’t really created that “face of the team” aspect as much as it has allowed teams to finesse plan B free agency somewhat. So this may well seem to be a place where the NHL is innovating in a better way than then NFL legislated in THEIR CBA.

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