Over the weekend, a prominent restricted free agent forward re-signed with a Canadian hockey club. The player in question was Connor Brown, who re-upped with the Toronto Maple Leafs on a three-year deal with a $2.1 million cap hit. The signing functionally ties up the last remaining bit of hockey business in the center of the universe, and now Lou Lamoriello and company can watch the Blue Jays play out their string as they prepare for Leafs camp to open.

A couple provinces over, the Brown signing may have a bit of an impact on contract negotiations between the Calgary Flames and their most prominent piece of unfinished contractual business, 21-year-old Sam Bennett.

Let’s just start with the obvious: Bennett and Brown aren’t identical players. Bennett’s two years younger and has played more NHL hockey. But both guys are coming out of their entry-level deals and were used in similarly complementary roles on their clubs – relied upon to help support their team’s big guns – so it’s likely that Brown’s deal will be brought up in negotiations.

Brown, 23, was the 156th overall pick in 2012. He finished his entry-level deal with 0.47 points-per-game in the NHL and 0.82 points-per-game in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies. He transitioned fairly smoothly from being an AHLer to a tweener and into a useful NHL contributor over a three season period. He was primarily a top six forward last season, playing with Auston Matthews and Zach Hyman or Leo Komarov and Nazem Kadri. Among regular Leafs forwards he was eighth in even strength time on ice and seventh in offensive zone start percentage (51.8%). His Relative Corsi was -0.4%, so possession-wise he was basically an average forward compared to the rest of his team. (Numbers culled from our friends at Natural Stat Trick.)

Bennett, 21, was the fourth overall pick in 2014. He finished his entry-level deal with 0.40 points-per-game in the NHL but didn’t play any minor league games. He burnt the first season of his deal by virtue of playing in the 2015 playoffs after missing the majority of 2014-15 recovering from shoulder surgery, so he really only has two full pro seasons under his belt – both in the NHL. He was a third line forward primarily last season, but because he was (a) healthy all season and (b) given fairly consistent ice time he ended up fifth on the team in even strength ice time among forwards. His line was also give a lot of high ground, as he began 56% of his shifts in the offensive zone – fourth among regular forwards on the club. He primarily played with a combination of Troy Brouwer, Kris Versteeg and Alex Chiasson, though he also spent time with Johnny Gaudreau early in the season. He had a Relative Corsi of -2.6%, indicating that despite his offensive zone starts he struggled a bit possession-wise relative to the rest of the team.

Brown’s a complementary winger who was given good linemates and favourable deployments and thrived. He’s older and arguably closer to what his NHL ceiling is going to be, but you can’t deny that he did well. While he has less of an NHL track record than Bennett, an argument can be made that he’s shown a much clearer progression over his three pro seasons than Bennett has over two – even ignoring the fact that Bennett was trying to learn how to be an NHL center last season. If the question being asked by both the Flames and Leafs of their respective players is “What are you going to be at the NHL level?” then the Brown contract is a market setter in the sense that it allows the Leafs (and Brown) to hedge their bets a bit and provide some interim contractual stability.

On the Bennett side, there’s much less clarity about what Bennett is at the NHL level but there’s also two years more developmental runway left for him than there is for Brown. He was given favourable deployments but a mixed bag of linemates – you can make an argument that Brouwer dragged a lot of players down into the muck with him last season – and the resulting season was full of ebbs, flows and a few absolute clunkers along the way. He was Calgary’s third- or fourth-best center last season, depending on how you want to weigh Matt Stajan’s contributions.

Matt Cane, who you should really follow on Twitter if you like smart data-driven content, developed a model for projecting free agency contracts for this offseason.

His prediction for Brown was $2.78 million and his projection for Bennett was $1.89 million. Now, Brown’s deal does seem like a bargain relative to what he probably should be making coming off a strong rookie season. But his lack of an NHL track record, and arguably his lack of importance relative to some of his teammates in the grand scheme of things in Toronto, probably drove down his price tag somewhat. Bennett’s arguably still seen as an important piece of the puzzle long-term and despite his uneven first two NHL years, his status as the first pick Brad Treliving ever made as a general manager probably still carries some cache in the hockey operations department.

With the negotiations dragging on, Brown’s signing probably gives the Flames a bit of ammunition in the form of a young player on a similarly ascendant team arguably taking less than his production should have warranted – probably due to a lack of an NHL sample size. But there are also enough differences between the two players in terms of their placement and importance within each organization that the Bennett saga is distinctly its own animal.