The psychological war in the BOA

That’s right, Calgary’s two best players are wingers Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk whose contracts are up after this season. The two combined for a $13.75 million cap hit over this season.

On a lesser scale, the contracts of Andrew Mangipane and blueliner Nikita Zadorov are also up.

Complicating matters even more is the fact that both players finished with a shooting % this season which is ~ 3% over their career shooting % so it’s likely that their seasons of 115 and 104 points respectively are more of an aberration than a new normal for the pair.

I mean, what do you pay guys who seem to look poised to take a tumble in stats but are still very good players?

GM Brad Treliving could’ve locked them up in season and taken steps to decrease their cap hits – front load the contracts, give them a huge signing bonus if they signed for a moderate paycheque afterwards, there’s all kinds of ways to get creative with their contracts.

But Treliving didn’t do that. He foolishly didn’t lock either player up and is now facing the very real possibility he could lose both in free agency for nothing, when losing even one of them would be a huge hit to the team’s fortunes. Take a look if you don’t believe me.

There could be other factors at play, but to me this says that there’s a good chance the players don’t believe in the team over the long term.

The Edmonton Oilers, on the other hand, have no such issue with their two best players, who were locked up in good time without any possibility of being signed by some other team for nothing. Connor Mcdavid has another four seasons on his current deal while the Deutschland Dangler Leon Draisaitl has another three seasons remaining.

This means the Flames could potentially have this season, and this season only, to make a long playoff run and win a cup. That’s a heck of a lot of pressure, especially when they didn’t even make the playoffs at all the season before.