What’s Taking So Long With Ferland and Giordano’s Deals?

We’re now less than a month away from the onset of Calgary Flames rookie camp, which starts in mid-September and leads into the annual Penticton YoungStars tournament. Right now, there’s a lot of thumb-twiddling and heel-cooling in anticipation of hockey starting up again, as the Flames have caught up on all of their off-season business.

Well, just about.

Because restricted free agent Micheal Ferland still is not signed, while captain Mark Giordano – whose contract extension was repeatedly touted as a “top priority” by Flames general manager Brad Treliving – is still not completed.

So what gives?

Ferland’s deal is arguably more pressing, given that he doesn’t have a contract for 2015-16 while Giordano does, but it’s also the deal I’m the least concerned with. Case in point: Ferland participated as the Flames representative for Dairy Queen’s Miracle Treat Day on Thursday. You don’t do that if you’re in the middle of a bitter contract negotiation, so I would imagine things are going well enough.

Ferland has two seasons of service remaining before he’s eligible for salary arbitration, so I imagine the sticking point is probably two seasons versus three seasons (and the requisite raise he’d need to be offered in order to give up going to arbitration potentially right away). Ferland also doesn’t have a massive NHL sample size, which makes things a bit sticky from a negotiation standpoint. He had 5 points in 26 regular season games and another 5 points in 9 playoff games, and it’s probably not unfair to want to wait a season to see what he is over an 82-game grind before throwing big money at him.

Right now, he’s probably worth – and probably going to get – about as much as Paul Byron, in the vicinity of $900,000. With another good season, he’ll probably get more. If you’re the Flames, you’d love to lock him down for three years at a lower cap hit. If you’re Ferland’s side, you’d love to get a show-me contract around $900,000 and then play like you did in the playoffs so you can really cash in next summer (or the summer after that in salary arbitration).

As for Mark Giordano, everybody who follows the Calgary Flames knows how important he is to the club, and knows that he is going to get paid rather handsomely. The lack of chatter regarding his deal is somewhat concerning, but since Brad Treliving’s arrived in Calgary this has been par for the course with these kinds of situations – you’ll hear absolutely nothing for a bit, then the day before the deal is done you’ll see a bit of chatter on Twitter from the usual sources, and then suddenly there will be a press release out announcing the new deal.

It’ll be long term. It’ll be pricey. And it’ll probably necessitate other moves to tidy up the salary cap situation for 2016-17. I’m not particularly concerned quite yet, but I might begin getting worried if training camp opens next month and the Giordano extension still isn’t done.