From Helene Elliot's twitter:
Dean Lombardi on re-signing Drew Doughty: "I am getting the feeling on Drew that unfortunately this could take a while." More on blog soon
I wrote this to Quisp and Niesy in a roundtable that got blown up by the Mike Richards trade about 2 weeks ago:
Dean's kind of in a tough spot because of Kopitar's contract, I think. I think he's looking at Mike Green's deal ($5 mil AAV) and Duncan Keith's deal ($5.55 mil AAV) and trying to come up with something similar to that, while Doughty and his agent are looking at Kopitar's deal ($6.8 mil AAV) and saying, "OK, so Doughty was even more impressive in his first 3 years so he should get a little more," and coming up with something around $7 mil AAV. You can compare it with the Ducks' situation with Bobby Ryan last year, where he hemmed and hawed but eventually had to accept a deal that was a little less than the other 2 guys on his team, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, for around $5.1 million. It's tough because both Kopitar and Doughty arguably deserve that much money, but actually giving them that much money can cost you a middle-pairing defenseman or top-6 winger down the line.
Ultimately, they'll probably figure out a 2-year deal and revisit it next year, when the Kings (hopefully) have their other elite forward in place (Edit: They arguably did this 2 days after I wrote this) and know how much they need to set aside for Doughty. No one will like that, mostly because that means we have to do it again in a year or so, but it's not a big deal. Doughty's not going anywhere, that's the thing everyone should keep in mind.
I just want to talk about hockey, is that so impossible a dream?
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