How Smart NHL Teams Can Take Advantage of the Death of the Bridge Contract

July 20th, 2016 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »

There is a shift happening in NHL finance, one which represents both a challenge and an opportunity to the league’s member clubs.

In the past, the highest-paid players were free agents with a long body of work behind them. Increasingly, though, teams have been signing young players—in a lot of cases players who haven’t even completed their entry-level contracts—to massive long-term deals.

Smart teams will understand the implications of this shift and alter their approach to take advantage. Competitors with less agile management groups will struggle with the change.



Last week, Larry Brooks of the New York Post wrote about the death of the bridge contract, specifically citing the Florida Panthers’ signings of Aaron Ekblad, Aleksander Barkov and Vincent Trocheck to long deals at significant money. He also noted, correctly, that this was despite long protestations from general managers about the cost of signing players coming off entry-level deals.

“[T]he bridge contract is a thing of the past,” writes Brooks, “blown up by management under absolutely no d ...

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