The Puck Stops Here

In the last NHL Central Bargaining Agreement, signing restricted free agents from other teams was a ridiculous strategy. In most cases, the team that signed the player to an offer sheet did not get the player. The player had the offer matched and remained with his old team. All that was accomplished was driving up salaries league-wide plus signing a player for a team you are competing against. As a result, they were rarely ever signed and even more rarely did they actually change teams. The last example of a successful restricted free agent signing was Chris Gratton who was signed by the Philadelphia Flyers from the Tampa Bay Lightning. This occurred in 1997. As compensation, Tampa Bay received 4 Flyer first round draft picks. This was not really a deterrant to any signings because these picks would be taken so far in the future (signing occurs in 1997, so picks will be 1998,1999, 2000 and 2001). How much would you pay to trade for a kid who is currently 14 or 15 and will not likely be in the NHL for the better part of a decade? It turned out that these 4 first round picks were used to select Simon Gagne (who is a good NHLer), Justin Williams (who has shown signs that he might become a good NHLer), Maxime Ouellet (who is still considered a prospect and not yet made any NHL impact) and Tim Gleason (who is also considered a prospect who has yet to make an NHL impact). Tampa didn't want the draft picks well in the future, so they promptly traded them back to the Flyers for Mikael Renberg and Karl Dykhuis. That worked out so poorly, that the teams reversed the deal about a year and a half later, as Renberg and Daymond Langkow were traded to the Flyers for Gratton and Mike Sillinger. All in all, signing restricted free agents was a pretty useless thing to do.

This seems to be changed under the new CBA. Even if the team matches your offer, you have forced them to use up some of their salary cap room to retain the player. This is good for your team because it prevents the opposing team from being able to afford as many good players. Also, the compensation scheme is significantly reduced.

In the old CBA here is the compensation scheme (as of 2003, it was indexed to league average salaries - all numbers are average annual salaries in the offer sheet):

If the offer is $727,502 or below no compensation
If the offer is over $727,502 - $1,000,315, compensation is a third-round choice
If the offer is over $1,000,315 - $1,182,191, compensation is a second-round choice
If the offer is over $1,182,191 - $1,455,005, compensation is a first-round choice
If the offer is over $1,455,005 - $1,818,754, compensation is a first and third-round choice
If the offer is over $1,818,754 - $2,182,505, compensation is a first and second-round choice
If the offer is over $2,182,505 - $2,546,256, compensation is two first-round choices
If the offer is over $2,546,256 - $3,091,882, compensation is two first-round and one second-round choice
If the offer is over $3,091,882, compensation is three first-round choices
For each additional $1,818,754, compensation is one additional first-round choice to a maximum of five

Under the new CBA, here is the situation:

If the offer is up to $660,000, no compensation
If the offer is $660,000 to $1 million, compensation is one 3rd round draft pick
If the offer is $1 to $2 million, compensation is one second round pick
If the offer is $2 to $3 million, compensation is one 1st and one 3rd round pick
If the offer is $3 to $4 million, compensation is one 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd round pick
If the offer is $4 to $5 million, compensation is two 1sts, one 2nd and one 3rd round pick
If the offer is over $5 million, compensation is four 1st round picks

Not only is the compensation less, draft picks are not worth as much because of reduced free agency ages in the new CBA, so you do not have control of nearly as long in a player's career when you draft them. This makes signing restricted free agents to offer sheets a logical move, yet it is one we have not yet seen? Why not? I think part of the answer is the newness of the CBA and the abbreviated summer. Everyone has to figure out how to play by a new rulebook and immediately sign the majority of their players in a record large group of free agents with a shorter than usual signing time, so they have not had time to try new things like signing RFAs to offers. That may change, Detroit has to sign Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg to restricted free agent contracts, both a very good young players who deserve raises, however Detroit does not have a whole lot of salary cap space in which to offer them raises. If I was a team with some salary cap room left (teams like this still exist right?), I would attempt to sign one or both of them to an offer that I don't think Detroit can handle. It would be a good move under the current CBA wouldn't it?

NOTE: These compensation draft pick dollar figures are tied to the salary cap, so they go up over time.