John Tavares, Matt Duchene, and the Elusive Art of Complementary Leadership

Winning a Stanley Cup is not easy

The 2009 NHL draft was a very good one, particularly at the top. John Tavares was no surprise as the first overall pick, putting himself of the radar of the wider hockey world when he was granted exceptional status as a 14-year-old, allowing him to play in the OHL. Only nine players to date have ever been granted that privilege, and you have heard of most of them.

Victor Hedman was the second pick, as 6-foot-7 defensemen who can skate, shoot, and defend with excellence tend to be pretty highly sought-after players (just in case you forgot how much the Stars like Lian Bichsel). And of course, Matt Duchene was picked third, fresh off two 30-goal seasons for Brampton in the OHL.

You can look at the rest of the draft here, and we could talk about how Nazem Kadri and Oliver Ekman-Larsson have both acquired Stanley Cup rings, while Tavares, Duchene, and Evander Kane¹ have not.

But today, I wanted to look at Duchene and Tavares in particular, as both of them are set to become unrestricted free agents—though both of them would clearly be open to re-signing with their current clubs, given sufficient incentive to do so. Tavares is supposedly looking for something like $5 million or more per season on a multi-year deal, while Duchene has simply said that he’s looking for “security” for his family, focusing more on term in his end-of-year comments than average annual value. And while Duchene is still getting paid a decent chunk of change by Nashville because of their buyout of his contract, players deserve to make what the market will pay them.

That $5 million number seems like a good general starting point for both players’ AAV, at least for our purposes. Both are veteran forwards who drive offense, and both of them are a couple years younger than recent Cup-winning octogenarian (if we’re going off media narratives here) Brad Marchand, who will almost certainly make more than either of them after treating the Stanley Cup Playoffs like his personal skills contest.

So the question I’d like to pose for today is this: which one of Tavares or Duchene would Dallas want to sign, if they had their choice? Becuase if you go beyond pure point totals, I think it’s a very interesting discussion indeed.