We’re slightly over a week away from the start of the 2019-20 NHL regular season and the Jets are still without restricted free agent forwards Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor.

Two months ago this wasn’t a big deal. Even at the start of this month of September there were more than ten “big name” restricted free agents around the league that were in need of new deals. That list is now down to three and two of them are Winnipeg Jets. (Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen is the other and currently he’s hanging out with Laine over in Switzerland)

It’s now officially time to start wondering just what the hold up is and more importantly get some answers as to why deals cant get done, especially in the face of so many other contracts being signed and plenty of examples of bridge and long term deals now surrounding us. Is it the players? Is it the team?

Why aren’t Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor in Jets sweaters right now?

A month ago there was talk that everyone was waiting for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Mitch Marner to come to an agreement as a way to ‘set the market’ and looking at the timeline of the latest deals, it would seem that for the most part that is what has happened. Here are the noteable RFA signings for the month of September:

It’s important to understand neither contract negotiation the Jets are in right now is cut and dry and that there are other factors that might be causing the delay.

Laine’s are well known at this point as he’s publicly voiced his concern about usage and his desire to play with the best players on the Jets. The fact that he hasn’t may have hurt his numbers and thus his bargaining position.

In an amusing twist, an argument can be made that Kyle Connor’s scoring numbers have been helped over the last two years as he’s been playing with the two best players on the team. Are the Jets willing to pay more than $7 million a year over the next six years to a player that no one truly knows can play on a line away from Mark Scheifele and Blake Wheeler?

There of course are Salary Cap implications in all this as well which have complicated matters, but that picture is a little less murky than it was a month ago with the signing of Josh Morrissey to a long term deal and Dustin Byfuglien being suspended and his contract (for now) being taken off the books.

Be that as it may, there are plenty of examples around the league now of done deals – both bridge and long term – that general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff along with agents Mike Liut (who represents Laine) and Richard Evans (agent for Connor) to work with now.

In the case of Boeser, Piont and Tkachuk, their salaries escalate in each of the three years with the largest dollar amount being in that third year (Boeser’s third year is $7.5 million, Point and Tkachuk’s are at a staggering $9 million each) in an effort to give the player leverage when that contract is up as a hefty qualifying offer would be needed from the teams just to retain their free agent rights.

If the Jets are looking at a bridge deal for Patrik Laine, there are your examples of how one can be worked out. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman suggested a week ago in his 31 Thoughts blog that Laine’s side would be looking at three years and nothing less than $6 million a season. That seems a tad high, but at the same time for a kid who scored 100 goals over the first three seasons of his NHL career, an ask of $6 million is not that unreasonable either.

Meanwhile if the Jets and Kyle Connor are looking at a long term deal of six or even more years, the recent examples aren’t as plentiful but between Marner’s six year $10.839 million cap hit and Konecny’s $5.5 million AAV, there does seem to be an example set on both the high and low end of the spectrum. Somewhere in the middle of that can be a Kyle Connor deal.

It feels like most, if not all of the groundwork has been laid out by other NHL clubs for deals to be done for both Laine and Connor. Right now in the case of each player, one side – or perhaps both sides, GM and agent – are being overly stubborn and possibly unreasonable in their contract negotiations. We won’t know for sure thanks to the “cone of silence” that always seems to surround the Winnipeg Jets organization, but Cheveldayoff did note a few weeks ago when there were still plenty of RFA contracts that needed to be done, that there wasn’t much concern on his end because the Jets weren’t the only team with RFA issues.

The Jets are now pretty much alone with two un-signed RFAs, so one wonders if it’s time to be concerned.