With under four months left before free agency kicks off, the negotiations surrounding Alex Tuch's next contract haven't exactly gained significant traction. There are positive steps being made to push talks forward, but whether they result in a tangible agreement being placed on the table remains to be seen.
One can do a good projection of what a Tuch contract could look like, but is there a unique method to offer the best prediction for his next deal?
Why not look at what his agent has been able to negotiate for other clients?
It's worth a shot.
Enter Brian Bartlett, who is associated with Bartlett Hockey and has spent over 20 years as a registered NHL agent, having graduated from Boston University's law school and spent time working as a lawyer.
At this moment in time, Bartlett has 51 clients with active contracts. The value of those contracts is worth well over $600 million and the average cap hit is just over $2.5 million. Of the 51 contracts on the board, 24 of them will be expiring after the 2025-26 season; 10 of those deals bind impending free agents to their respective teams. Those UFA's don't just include Tuch; Seattle Kraken forwards Jaden Schwartz and Bobby McMann are both set to hit unrestricted free agency after the season.
Outside of Alex Tuch, Bartlett has Jordan Greenway and Gavin Bayreuther locked up to a contract with the Sabres organization. And the big-name talent he represents includes Tuch and other players like Cale Makar and Brock Faber. Makar earns Bartlett's largest negotiated AAV at $9 million per year, which is part of a contract extension signed a year before his Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup.
With suggestions indicating that Tuch wants to earn somewhere close to Adrian Kempe's $10.63 million annual total, Bartlett is in a strong position to bring home the biggest payday yet for a client under his services.
If we're going to make an argument about precedence, that's going to be a bit of a challenge when thinking about the financial side of things; Makar and Faber are both defensemen while Tuch is a forward, meaning that any attempt at comparing current and projected contract values is small potatoes.
But it becomes easier to make a comparison when considering the nature of some of the teams that signed players under Bartlett's agency, which tend to take the form of organizations building towards success and that are looking to be long-term players for the Stanley Cup.
We could turn to Utah Mammoth forward Clayton Keller, who has the second-most valuable contract as negotiated by Bartlett. Keller signed his new deal, worth $7.15 million per year for eight seasons, prior to the 2019-20 season after being on an entry-level deal. Now, over five years after the then-Arizona Coyotes made a brief-but-impactful stint in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Keller is playing a large part in the Utah Mammoth's push for a playoff spot.
How about Matt Boldy? He currently earns $7 million per year and $49 million total under a deal he signed in January 2023. Such a deal came off the heels of a strong rookie season, taking Boldy off of his entry-level contract and making him the third-most valuable player on the Minnesota Wild at the time. Like Keller, Boldy's contract serves as a key cog in a Wild team that has made the playoffs in two of the three seasons since extending Boldy, and that is currently on course for a push for the Stanley Cup.
It might be tough to get a gauge on what Tuch's next contract looks like; the suggestion is that 7-8 million might simply be a far cry from what is being projected.
But what's clear is that this could very well be the largest contract that Bartlett has negotiated. And considering that the Sabres, like the Wild and Mammoth, are in a very strong position to be a playoff contender for the long-term, deals like those that kept Boldy and Keller in town could at least serve as a basis to understand the efforts being put in place to get a deal done.