Blue Jackets need to avoid fracturing relationship with Greaves through arbitration
Many people who have gone shopping for a car or a house know the experience of trying to negotiate down a price to something you’d be willing to pay. Very few, however, have tried to close a gap of $4.7 million, but that’s exactly the situation in which the Columbus Blue Jackets find themselves in their contract talks with restricted free agent goaltender Jet Greaves.
On Tuesday, it was reported that Greaves filed at $7.5 million, while the Blue Jackets filed at $2.8 million for their upcoming arbitration hearing. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a $4.7 million difference between what Greaves believes he deserves to be paid and what the team believes he deserves to be paid, as these numbers are submitted for negotiation purposes rather than as true reflections of value. Still, the Blue Jackets need to be careful to not alienate their young goaltender in these contract talks.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed Columbus’ best course of action in coming to terms with Greaves.
Tyler Yaremchuk: One thing that came down the pipe yesterday was the arbitration numbers for Columbus and their future and current number one goalie Jet Greaves. I don’t know if you saw this, Hutts, but the team filed at $2.8 million. Greaves filed at $7.5 million. So Jeff Marek made this comparison, Columbus basically looked at him and said, “You’re Arturs Silovs.” Jet Greaves looked at himself and said, “No, I’m Dustin Wolf.” There’s that big of a gap. If I’m Columbus, I don’t think I want to piss off a key piece of my franchise, especially considering all the (Zach) Werenski stuff and everything that went down over the last month or so. I probably just pay the guy because he’s going to be your number one for the next five to seven or eight years.
Carter Hutton: And the factor is, if you can get him on that big number, if you can get big term on Jet Greaves, that number might be unbelievable with the cap going up as well. And I think for Jet Greaves with the arbitration, this is the way it always plays out. I never had a chance to go because I was always too old before I actually started making big time NHL dough. The team is going to go low, you’re going to go high, let’s negotiate to find get somewhere healthy. But when it actually gets into those arbitration meetings, that is what you’re tapping on. You kind of want to avoid that, because that’s where you go into these meetings and they say all the nasty stuff about you, and they say all the things that are going to be detrimental and you do not want to fray this relationship.
They’ve been through this before, and this is a team that’s struggled to get in the playoffs. They had (Sergei) Bobrovsky, he’s gone. They had Elvis (Merzlikins), it hasn’t worked out. Now you have a chance to build a relationship and a rapport, and with Rick Bonus, something that he’s so big on is culture. Jet Greaves is very good. We watched him at the World Championship, how good he was for Canada, how good he’s been this year. Lock this guy up, give him whatever it is, and then I think you’re committed to it. I think that would be the best way to go about it, without him having to hear all the negative stuff about him.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Wednesday’s episode here…