I certainly agree.

I tend to agree that once a team has exhausted its 3 offers to a player that they should only have the right to match any offers made to an RFA. 

At the same time I am not really sure it makes that much of a difference to the kind of offers the RFA will get.  I am quite certain that someone would have offered $2,999,999 to Avery if Garrett was not allow to bid.  Whether someone would have stepped up and offered $1 more to open the door to a 1st rounder as compensation is up in the air (although I believe it would have happened). 

Bottom line is that a team allowing their player to go to RFA is taking a big risk.  Surely if they match a team's offer, they will be paying more than the RFA had been looking for.  And if they don't choose to match, they are only getting compensation based on what another team in the league thinks the player is worth.  In this case, a salary of $3.2M and a first round draft choice.

I will admit however, the rules around RFA need some cleaning up.  I would actually like to develop a proposal for a new RFA system and submit it to the league for comments and possible enactment. That is if the BOD thinks this would be a worthwhile activity.

Intelligent thoughts or comments?

I believe that the last offer (3rd offer) for the player should be the beginning bid for the player.
For example:
Joe Smith was earning 650k last season and believes he should earn a salary of 2.5 million with 1.5 million signing bonus for three years. But has rejected the last offer of 1.5 million dollar salary for three years plus 1.2 million signing bonus. However, he has been qualified as an RFA so the team retains his rights.

And so for the RFA bidding process, his last bid is 1.9 million. Any team could beat it, but only to what Joe Smith expects. In the NHL, the player talks with teams and then signs an offer sheet. (i.e. Tomas Vanek, Dustin Penner) so the player agent for the player should talk with the team who makes a bid. If the team is willing to pay the amount that Smith thinks he deserves, then the bidding should end there. Sign an offer sheet, the team then has one week to decide whether or not to match. If they match, then obviously nothing happens, but if they don't, they get the compensation under the rules.

For the record, i dislike the fact that Toronto was the first team to bid on Avery pumping up the price of compensation to a 1st round pick. I felt that after three offers, any bid by Toronto should be disregarded because that's basically circumventing the rules. Obviously Phoenix is willing to part with a first round pick, but if Avery was looking for a contract in his negiotiations with Toronto that had an average salary less than 3 million a season, then he would have signed the offer immediately. I don't see why he would remain on the market if he got an offer he liked from Toronto. I'm not privy to the negiotiations between Toronto and Avery, so I'm just as clueless as most of you.

I would have offered Avery $2,999,999... 



PhoenixGM wrote:

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I made the first bid of 2.5 million, Toronto bumped it to 3 million, I re-raised to 3.2 million.

Personally, since I am the only team outside of Toronto to bid on Avery I think the 2.5 million bid should stand as the winner, and the compensation should be a 2nd round pick.

But I obviously am biased.

I await the league's decision.

Steve

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Personally calling any other teams UFA, RFA, or trades stupid or dumb isn't very constructive. I've done nothing against the rules. I've bid on a free agent according to the rules. Doesn't matter that he is restricted or unrestricted, or if I've got a right to match an offer. I was certainly not going to take a 2nd rd pick for him. Now i've got options to consider in moving forward and building my team.

I understand how you feel Garrett, our team has had about 3-4 discussions like this around one of our moves. The best advice I can offer is that most of the guys here aren't criticizing what you've done, but rather the way the rules are written. Its common knowledge that the rules are going to continually be adjusted, especially in year 1, until they are generally correct.

Like we've always done though, we can't make the rule retroactive as it isnt fair. There haven't been any retroactive adjustments to rules so far, so I would argue there likely wont be for you either.

Kirk and Rex in particular, along with a few other GMs, sometimes myself included, just needs to learn how to express this kinda thing without comments like "Pretty weak strategy Garrett" or "kinda a bush league move if u ask me."

Both of those comments are targeted at you rather than the actual rule, and thats what gets annoying.