Leon Draisaitl’s Agent, Mike Liut (Yeah, that Mike Liut), recently spoke with Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman on their latest 31 Thoughts podcast and one of the topics they spoke about was what it was like negotiating Draisaitl’s most recent contract extension with Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli.
Here’s the transcription from the pod!
Friedman: One of the biggest situations in the league right now is Nylander (William) and reportedly and I’m one of the people that’s reported it, one of the issues is he doesn’t want to be too far away from the top salary players on Toronto’s roster. You went throught a similar negotiation with Draisaitl and McDavid, how much was that a factor of where McDavid was going to be?
Liut: It’s a factor, there’s no question about that. The Draisaitl negotiation, for me personally, I enjoyed it. Peter and I we got to a point where he approached me at the draft and said “I’m not avoiding you, I just don’t have anything else to say.” and I said, “me too!”
So to a point you kinda get stuck a little bit at times but we went through a whole analytics thing he was looking at because they (McDavid and Draisaitl) were playing together, was it with me/without me, you know it was a beta program. It was “who drives the play?” and our analytics said they drive it better when they’re apart than together which would make sense because they got to share the puck and nobody drives it better than Connor McDavid. You know, he’s just gone, right?
For me, it was sort of an intellectual discussion about how the game is perceived today. You know Leon’s playoff success that year, what he meant to the team, what his attributes were going. So we’re into analytics, we’re stepping out of analytics into what our eyeballs see and then at some point you gotta make a deal, which we did.
Not really a lot said there but I find it interesting that each time I hear a GM or an agent speak about Peter Chiarelli they generally have positive things to say about their experiences, whether it be how logical and straight-forward he is or like above where Liut says he enjoyed the experience and how it turned into an intellectual discussion about how the game is perceived today. I find that the only people that don’t like dealing with him are the people that have never actually dealt with him apart from in their mind.
I was sort of hoping to get a little more insight into the negotiations and the analytics part, to be honest but nevertheless, that little tidbit about how important it was for Leon to be as close as possible to the top earner on the team shed a bit of light into the mindsets players are going into contract negotiations with these days.
I’ve said this before I’m sure but I’m very happy with what the Oilers gave Leon Draisaitl and I’m not one that believes he has to be driving his own line for it to be a fair deal. If Leon scores more with McDavid, Great! At least he’s scoring because man does the Oilers MSM love writing about Draisaitl when he’s not scoring. It’s like clockwork. I’m not sure how to find this information, and perhaps you could help me out here, but are there any players that have scored as much with McDavid since he joined the league in 2015 as Draisaitl has?
Maybe they’re meant for each other. Maybe Draisaitl is the Kurri to McDavid’s Gretzky.
If that’s the case, I hope McLellan does the right thing and keeps them together. You never know what kind of greatness might be unleashed.
