Sheng Peng: So Crosby has been at $8.7 million AAV for his last three contracts, 19 years in total. What’s the origin of that?
Pat Brisson: For me, I always want to do what's right for the players. I tell my players, I wear a medal around my neck, when you guys are happy. So when the players are happy is when I deliver the amount of resources that I could around my player and give them the information, and at the end of the day, for them to be compensated fairly.
But with Sidney, what people don't understand, or don't know, the second contract, the one that he did the 12-year deal at 8.7; he was 26 years old, 25 going on 26. It was a time where we could do 12-year deals or 14-year deals. And we looked at it where Sidney, the way he plays the game, he was very physical. As you know, he was concussed. He was concussed the year before. He missed a full year almost, and he came back. He came back and he played 20 games.
His next contract was not insurable, so in other words, he had to have an exclusion to his head, the insurance companies are not lined up to insure that contract.
We were talking about a five-year deal, probably 11 million a year. And then we pushed. He's 26. Doing five years, gonna be 31.
And then we said, why don't we do eight years? We had agreed to do nine years at 11 a year. [So] nine years, he was going to be 35, and we said, are you going to play past 35 years old, the way you play the game? And Sidney was like, "I'm going to do my best, but there might be a time when I might not be able to."
Because Sidney's a physical player. He grinds it every night, and he had that concussion. So we decided to add three years to the deal and lower the AAV. Then we start playing with the numbers; we're at 9.1, 9.2, and then 8.7 came about again, and we end up doing 8.7 times 12.
But that deal was front-loaded. Sidney made 12 million the first five years, six years. At the end, he was making 3 million a year.
But if we had a crystal ball? We didn't know he was going to play [that long]. People forgot he missed a full year, and he signed a 12-year deal.
We thought he might play six months or might play three years or most likely, this guy's not playing after 35 years old.
He would have been gone through LTIR the last three years, last four years of his career.
His goal was to play, but we looked at the data, the possibilities, and internally, the odds were that he wasn't going to play past 34 years old.
So when we signed that deal, the ownership group took the entire risk.
So people say he left money on the table, by virtue of that. Now the last negotiation, two years at 8.7, he didn't care much. He kept it that way. His next deal, he may do an extension next summer. He may sign a one-year deal for $12 [million]. I don't know.
I want to clarify that he did and he didn't [with the 8.7]. We came close to a five-year deal for $60 million at the time.
Sheng Peng: You would never tell a client to take the same AAV for their entire career.
Pat Brisson: No, no, no. (laughs) Especially that contract at 8.7 for 12 years. That's easy to explain if you really look at it, [trying to protect him].
Source: Macklin Celebrini's agent describes ‘special' contract negotiations with Sharks
