While much of the Calgary Flames organization and the greater Canadian hockey community will spend Monday morning showering adulation on Jarome Iginla, general manager Brad Treliving and a few members of his hockey operations team will likely be in Toronto. The occasion? A salary arbitration hearing with depth forward Garnet Hathaway.
Per Chris Johnston of Sportsnet, the Flames and Hathaway agent Matt Keator have submitted their paperwork to the arbitrator: Hathaway’s ask is $975,000 and the Flames’ offer is a league-minimum $650,000. Both are one-year, one-way pacts.
Garnet Hathaway/Calgary Flames salary arbitration filings
Player ask: $975,000
Team offer: $650,000
Hearing is scheduled for Monday.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) July 28, 2018
Generally speaking, the arbitrator lands somewhere in the middle. The midpoint between these two positions is $812,500. Hathaway had a $650,000 NHL salary on a two-way deal last season, but spent the majority of the year with the Flames.
What is Hathaway? Up until last season, he seemed like a fairly safe bet to be an energy player but not a whole much more. But he gelled really well with Mark Jankowski on the NHL level and was superb in the AHL (with 19 points in 18 games) and pretty solid with the Flames (with 13 points in 59 games). But much like the Brett Kulak negotiations, Treliving doesn’t seem to want to back up a Brinks truck for “pretty solid” players on a team that finished 11 points out of the playoffs.
He also has to sign Noah Hanifin to a deal, and that’ll be a hefty cap hit, so there are many reasons for Treliving to hedge his bets on Hathaway.
Hathaway’s hearing goes 9 a.m. ET on Monday morning in Toronto, with the result being released likely sometime around midday on Wednesday – barring a settlement in the interim.
