OK, fine ... I mostly wrote this in my head anyway, and it won't change anything. The agent is mostly a jerk in how he has manipulated the media and let's be honest ... the Canadian hockey media doesn't need a lot of manipulation to believe less flattering things about non-traditional US markets. It plays right into their prejudices. Note that all numbers are AAV.
First, the much ballyhooed "$6.5 million dollar offer" happened .... in the fall of 2018. At that time Aho was a winger and the Canes were negotiating extensions with him and Terravainen. Turbo's negotiations went well and the team carried on negotiating with his agent and eventually got him to agree to a long term deal at $5.4 million. Aho's negotiations went less well, with the agent basically shutting them down until after the season. They were clearly betting on Aho having a great year, which he proceeded to do, in the process transforming himself from a scoring winger to a line-driving center. No big deal and nobody saw it as a red flag.
Next step ... Aho and Carolina pick up negotiations a couple of weeks after the season winds down. Carolina has two plays here ... they would either push it quickly and try to get Aho to bite on a bridge deal with a starting offer of 2 years at $7.5 million, and if that got shot down they would hunker in for the long haul and try and hammer out a long term deal at a higher figure. I do NOT know the higher figure, but you can do the math ... it's probably in line with the $8.5 that he eventually got. Aho's agent shoots down the very idea of a bridge deal as insulting ... hint, it's not ... and flatly states that Aho will not sign for more than 5 years. Period. That of course, is the scenario Carolina most wants to avoid because no GM wants his best forward's contract to take him right up to the earliest UFA date and no further. That's gut level basic. They schedule a second session for draft weekend and everybody goes to their corners to plot strategy.
Here's where it gets dicey. Before they even have a change to sit down in Vancouver, there are rumors floating around the media that Carolina and Aho are miles apart and that the Canes are lowballing their star player. Apparently the Canes walked into the room and were confronted with an ultimatum from Johansson ... 5 year deal or we start shopping for offer sheets when the talking period opens after the draft. Carolina agains states that they're rather not do that and tells Johansson they'll get back to him. End of meeting. No fireworks, no arguing, no real conflict. Just two parties not on the same page yet, with term being the sticking point.. Big whoop. Before the end of the day, that $6.5 million offer the Canes made to Aho back in 2018 surfaces on the internet. That number never came up in negotiations and is no longer on the table, but some in the media are hearing it and chattering about the Canes squeezing Aho and what a disastrous meeting they had, yadda, yadda. At this point the hockey media big boys are even reporting about how badly the meeting went. Carolina sticks to their guns and contacts Johansson to get feedback a week later ahead of the talking period for UFAs and RFAs. That's when they get ghosted by Johansson, and Waddell later says that's when they figured they were going to have to deal with an offer sheet. So Carolina reaches out to their own media contracts to reassure the hockey world that they will match any offer.
And here's what the Canes believe happened from there. Johansson is plugged in up in Montreal. Not just with the team, since he reps a good chunk of their roster, but also with the media. Johansson doesn't just call up Bergevin to inform him that he'd love to see an offer sheet for Aho for 5 years at $8.5 million, he also starts a whisper session with some writers downplaying Carolina's financial stability and hinting that this is the real reason Aho "wants out." The Canes have NOT been told that their player wants out, and whether he actually does or not is clearly a matter of much internet debate to this day. But the rumors of the club's financial issues are percolating none the less, and when the Montreal media is presented with the idea that Aho wants out of Carolina by Bergevin and Johansson after the offer sheet is signed ... of course he does. That's confirms what has been talked about around day for the last couple of days. Carolina believes that when he met with Bergevin in the discussion period, that Johansson presented him with the structure of the offer sheet that was eventually signed ... including the signing bonus structure which was designed specifically to take force Dundon to come out of pocket for two huge chunks of money within the span of a year. In other words, when Waddell and Dundon had their press availability and acted insulted by the offer they weren't acting. The Canes see that offer sheet as something that specifically targeted Dundon and was specifically geared to leverage Montreal's interest into a lockout proof contract when they never got the chance to even have a conversation about that in open negotiations. Carolina would assert that the agent knew full well that the club was fully and financially committed to keeping his client for the long term, and eventually the likelihood was that he'd get virtually the same money in terms of AAV for a long deal with the term being the only sticking point. Carolina was confident that if term was the only issue, they'd figure it out well before camp.
Some of that is bound to be self-serving in that you never see yourself as the bad guy in these scenarios. But I sat down yesterday and scrolled through the Twitter posts of several hockey media types and what do you know? Carolina's story checks out in terms of the timing. What I don't know for sure is whether or not Johansson really never got around to negotiating on term and a bonus structure with Carolina. But since the rest of this checks out I think the larger narrative sounds plausible. So, bottom line ... this whole negotiation was a freaking ambush. Carolina probably should have been more proactive in their negotiations and maybe they would have sniffed it out soon enough to avoid all the slagging off they got in the media ... but maybe not. Who knows?
