Here's one thing you should know about free agency.
Everyone gets paid. They get paid a lot. And they get paid more than they're "worth."
And the other thing is that "worth" is subjective. If a team has money to spend and is willing to meet a player's price (and they like the player), you can make far worse decisions. The nature of free agency is overpayment, and if you read Twitter this time of year, everyone makes too much money and every contract stinks.
It's just money, and that's kind of what professional sports is all about.
/end rant
Ah, yes. The Columbus Blue Jackets.
More than a few eyebrows were raised to the roof on Tuesday evening when news broke that the Philadelphia Flyers were on the verge of signing soon-to-be free agent center Kevin Hayes to a seven-year, $50 million contract. It's believed the Blue Jackets, had Hayes reached the open market, would be a contender to sign him. Scratch a name off the list.
Whether or not Hayes would sign here is one thing, but the other is perhaps more important: what it means for Matt Duchene, who is still considering the Blue Jackets as his free-agent decision looms in the near future. Hayes, 27, has topped 20 goals and 50 points only once in his NHL career (it happened this past season) and he was able to turn that into more than $7 million per year.
Duchene has scored 20-plus goals seven times in his career and a career-best 31 goals this past season, split between Ottawa and Columbus. He's going to come with a higher price tag than Hayes, and possibly the second-highest price tag on this year's market behind teammate Artemi Panarin (we left Erik Karlsson out of that mix because he's already signed with San Jose).
The Blue Jackets would like to keep both players, and perhaps Duchene is their best hope, but they have a decision to make.
If they sign Duchene to an extension, it costs them another first-round pick. Their 2019 pick was part of the Feb. 22 trade that brought Duchene to the Blue Jackets, and a condition of the deal was their 2020 first-rounder is sent to the Senators if Duchene re-signs.
So, let's say the Blue Jackets and Duchene come to an agreement. The cost of doing business is something like this:
- A long-term contract of, in all likelihood, eight years.
- An average annual value of ~$10M, so ~$80M total.
- The Blue Jackets' 2020 first-round pick.
That's not considering the trade pieces required to acquire Duchene in the first place: Jonathan Davidsson, Vitaly Abramov and Columbus' 2019 first-rounder. Yikes.
And this isn't to suggest the Blue Jackets don't need Duchene or a No. 1 center of his caliber. They absolutely do. But the long-term effects of signing a 28-year-old player until he's 36 years old, committing $80M-plus to him, and surrendering two first-round picks could well be too high a price for GM Jarmo Kekalainen to meet.
It's a really, really difficult decision for the Blue Jackets.
They love Duchene. Kekalainen has been after him for years. And by all accounts, Duchene loved his time in Columbus. But the business of hockey is unforgiving and they can't just look at today, or even tomorrow; a Duchene deal involves a ton of the present (money) and more of the future (the draft picks).
The 2019 free agent market hasn't even officially opened but it's already been set – the top-end players are going to be paid well and there's likely to be a bidding war, even if the conventional wisdom suggests Duchene is headed to either Nashville or Columbus.
Now, it's a matter of whether or not the Blue Jackets want to be involved in that battle.
