MacKinnon signs extension with Colorado

[Kin]

I felt that the "again" part though referenced taking less on the initial contract by design, and that is not what he did. As he said in his first quote, he took what he was worth at the time.

I think we mainly agree outside of what I said about him probably being able to get more if he had taken a tougher stance in negotiations. Lots of players on their post-ELC deal don't just get paid what they're worth at the time but get teams to invest in their future growth. So it is possible to both get paid what you think you're worth and think you could have negotiated more.

The article you posted frames it as something that just worked out really well for the Avalanche, which is what it was, but when people take the MacKinnon situation and then apply it to the Leafs, it is frustrating because the situations are different.  This isn't MacKinnon's fault (so my original post about the comment aging poorly is wrong), but it doesn't help that people can twist that quote when it is applied to the Leafs to make it seem like Matthews, Marner, and Tavares should have been paid less by the Leafs in order to build a winner.  It's an apples to oranges comparison.  The stars just aligned properly for the Avalanche. 

As a general rule I'm sort of tuned out from Leafs media and hockey media in general so I'm not always aware of the bad arguments that go on in sports radio(but from what I remember there are lots! Most sports media thrives on generating conflict at the expense of reasoned discussion and makes us dumber! Don't listen!) but I agree the two situations are not very similar.

If this iteration of the Leafs doesn't achieve the success we all hope they do I think the big, and fair, questions regarding how Dubas put the team together will be:

1. Should Dubas have tried to sign Matthews/Marner to extensions after their second seasons rather than after their third?

2. Was signing Tavares a good decision?

The first one is hard to gauge as he very well might have tried to sign them but if memory serves that would have been in his first off-season as GM so that may have been a lot to tackle. The Marner contract though, especially, was one where not signing him to an extension and then letting him play his third year on the 2nd line with Tavares seemed like a recipe for Marner to see his value jump a ton, which it promptly did. Matthews was probably going to be in a position to get what he wanted regardless but I do think that if Dubas had locked up Marner before signing Tavares he very well could have got him for considerably less than what he did sign for.

The Tavares one...well, that's probably a topic for another time.