Jarmo Kekalainen, the Blue Jackets’ former general manager, must have left his negotiating hammer in the desk that Don Waddell inherited as president of hockey operations/general manager.
Rather than hammering out a new contract with Adam Fantilli, a restricted free agent who doesn’t have arbitration rights, Waddell is instead guiding the Blue Jackets down a familiar path that has their top young center missing the start of training camp, which is his only leverage.
The first day of training camp Sept. 16 at Nationwide Arena was for players to get medical exams before the first day of on-ice work Sept. 17, and it sounds like Fantilli will miss that, too.
“We’re going to send
[a new proposal], probably, in the next 24 hours back to him, just to see,” Waddell said Sept. 16. “You know, we want to keep this thing moving. I can’t say that we have [any talks] scheduled right now, but we’ve been talking through the week here.”
What's the biggest hurdle for Columbus Blue Jackets signing Adam Fantilli?
Fantilli, 21, is represented by agent Pat Brisson, who represents many of the NHL’s top players. Brisson didn't immediately reply to a text message sent by The Dispatch.
Waddell, who has been a GM in the NHL for 22 years, has negotiated plenty of contracts with Brisson over that span.
The holdup with this one is about the team and player still trying to bridge wide gaps in what the player and team believe Fantilli’s new contract length and salary should be.
The Blue Jackets want a long-term deal, but Fantilli's price to sign one is evidently too high for the team to sign off. No salary numbers have been released, but The Athletic reported Sept. 15 that a gap of $2 million to $3 million exists for whatever term is being discussed.
“This is the business side of our sport,” Waddell said. “Is there a difference in the value that we put on the player versus what they’re putting on [him]? Yes, and that’s why we don’t have a contract. But I’m still confident that we’ll find a resolution to this in the near future.”
If not, Fantilli may wind up on the wrong side of the hammer, which Kekalainen used for symbolism to describe the power struggle between teams and restricted free agents who don’t have arbitration rights. The team controls the hammer early, using it to keep RFA salaries at what the GM feels is reasonable until players start to gain leverage through arbitration cases and unrestricted free agency.
It's a contentious relationship, as described in that way, and it doesn't apply to all teams or GMs. The Blue Jackets, however, seem to make it an organizational pillar. It's how they lost former star center Ryan Johansen, power forward Josh Anderson and top center Pierre-Luc Dubois to trades.
All three went through long, tense negotiations with Kekalainen and John Davidson, the Blue Jackets’ former president of hockey operations, and all three were traded in the primes of their careers. Johansen and Anderson missed training camps, like Fantilli, while Dubois signed just before camp in 2021 after requesting a trade.
He then proceeded to play his way out of town in quick order, using a memorable display of lethargy to prompt a trade to the Winnipeg Jets that brought Patrik Laine and Jack Roslovic to Columbus. Now the Jackets are risking their relationship with Fantilli being damaged similarly if he misses all or most of the two-week preseason.
Unless he's intent on holding out into the regular season, the standoff is likely to end with Fantill agreeing to sign a deal that’s shorter in length than Waddell wants and lower in salary than he wants. Both sides walk away unhappy, and the hammer leaves marks.
Waddell is hopeful that won't happen.
“We went through two arbitration cases this summer where we settled, and I told Jet [Greaves], face-to-face right there the day of the arbitration, ‘This isn’t about you as a person. This is the business part,’ ” he said. “In Adam’s case, Adam was one of the players at the end of the season that was hurting the most by not making the playoffs and thought he could’ve played better ... and I know what he means to this franchise, and I know that he cares about this franchise.”
Shifting value for restricted free agents contributed to Adam Fantilli's holdout from Columbus Blue Jackets
The value of RFAs such as Fantilli shot up in July after one of his peers atop the 2023 NHL Draft, center Leo Carlsson, signed a five-year contract offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers worth $18 million per season.
The Anaheim Ducks matched it to keep Carlsson as their top center, but the inherent value of top RFAs skyrocketed the second he signed the offer sheet. It didn’t take long for the top pick in 2023, center Connor Bedard, to sign a five-year extension with the Chicago Blackhawks that left Fantilli as the only unsigned player from that draft’s top three picks.
Fantilli’s numbers compare favorably to Carlsson’s and Bedard’s through their first three NHL seasons, and salaries for other RFAs have also shot upward in the past two months – including the Ducks signing power forward Cutter Gauthier on Sept. 15 with a front-loaded, six-year deal worth $13.5 million a season.
Waddell said the Blue Jackets have increased their offer to Fantilli significantly from its initial price, but that was before Carlsson’s offer sheet. Fantilli and Brisson wisely waited until the NHL’s free agency window opened July 1 to see how the market would shake out with Carlsson and Bedard.
“From where we were early in the summer to where we are now, we’ve come up quite a bit,” Waddell said. “Obviously, we’re talking about a long-term contract, so we have a lot of positive feelings about where he’s going to go in his career, but it still comes down to ... it’s a business. You have to get the right [cap hit] for us, and it works for him, and in turn, the same thing [applies to Fantilli’s side].”
Dispatch Blue Jackets/Crew reporter Brian Hedger can be reached at bhedger@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Adam Fantilli holdout puts Columbus Blue Jackets in a familiar spot
