Stone is scheduled for a hearing Friday. While the parties typically work out a deal beforehand, arbitration is likely in this case given the gap in negotiations - the Senators have countered with a $5-million offer.
Should Stone be awarded his salary demands, it will be the largest amount in arbitration history, topping the $7.5 million that Shea Weber was granted in 2011. Stone, 26, is coming off a three-year agreement that carried a $3.5-million cap hit, per CapFriendly.
Working in Stone's favor is that he tied for the team lead in scoring last season, notching 20 goals and 42 assists. However, knee and leg injuries limited him to just 58 appearances on the campaign, which brought his nightly production to 1.07 points per game, a career high.
While the Senators will continue to work toward a deal with Stone, they'll first face an arbitration case with defenseman Cody Ceci later Wednesday. The two sides were more than $2.6 million apart as of Monday.
The following five players have each been pegged as a breakout candidate in recent years. Instead, they plateaued or regressed and are now flying under the fantasy radar.
However, it's possible those predictions were just a year or two early. Now that the hype has died down, here are five sleeper candidates whose past disappointing performances can translate into great value.
G Robin Lehner, Islanders
Fantasy expectations are low for newly acquired Islanders goaltender Lehner, who joins a team that was historically bad defensively last season and lost John Tavares this summer. But there's one reason why he could drastically exceed those expectations: Barry Trotz.
Trotz is a defensive wizard. His teams have ranked in the top 10 in goals against nine times during his coaching career. While it helped he had Braden Holtby in Washington, many of those top-10 seasons came in Nashville with goalies such as Mike Dunham, Tomas Vokoun, and Chris Mason manning the crease before defensemen Shea Weber and Ryan Suter came into their own.
It remains to be seen whether Trotz can turn this group of misfits into a competitive bunch, but if he can make Dan Ellis fantasy relevant, it's more than worth taking a chance on the once highly touted Lehner in the late rounds as your third goaltender.
C/RW Elias Lindholm, Flames
Lindholm seems to top breakout lists before each season, but after five largely unproductive years in Carolina, the hype train has come to a screeching halt.
A fresh start could be exactly what Lindholm needs to finally live up to his potential. Predominately a center the last couple of seasons, he'll likely shift to the wing in Calgary with the Flames already set with centers Sean Monahan, Mikael Backlund, Derek Ryan, and Mark Jankowski.
Lindholm has averaged more shots per game in his career on the wing. He will also deal with less defensive responsibility and could wind up on the team's top line alongside Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau. The addition of James Neal may prevent this, but it's possible the veteran sniper slides down the lineup to provide depth and secondary scoring, which the Flames lacked a season ago.
RW Oliver Bjorkstrand, Blue Jackets
Bjorkstrand was another sexy pick to be a breakout candidate a year ago, but his 11-goal, 40-point campaign was rather underwhelming.
The Dane has been a sharpshooter his entire career. He filled the net in junior, did the same in the AHL, and scored at better than a 20-goal pace through his first two NHL seasons.
His disappointing goal total last year was largely due to a 6.7 shooting percentage, well below the league average and almost half of his career mark heading into last season.
Bjorkstand averaged only 14:18 of ice time in 2017-2018, but that should increase in his second full campaign, especially if Artemi Panarin gets traded, which would also lead to more power-play time. More opportunities to shoot the puck with his quick release could result in a 25- or 30-goal campaign.
C Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Oilers
Nugent-Hopkins isn't in the same category as the other players on this list, but there's a strong chance he gets overlooked on draft day.
He averaged 0.84 points per game in his rookie year, and while many predicted he'd make positive strides, he has since failed to match that number.
The 25-year-old has, somewhat amazingly, been in the league for seven seasons now, but he may have just recently found the key to a new level of success: playing alongside Connor McDavid.
Nugent-Hopkins spent the end of the 2017-18 season playing left wing on McDavid's line, and the results were sensational. He tallied nine goals and nine assists in his final 18 games, shooting the puck at a higher rate than he ever has in his career.
If he can stick on McDavid's wing for a full season, 80 points is in the cards.
LW Andre Burakovsky, Capitals
Last offseason, the Capitals had to part ways with forwards Justin Williams and Marcus Johansson to stay under the salary cap. Many assumed this would be Burakovsky's chance for an increased role, but he failed to take advantage in what was an injury-riddled campaign.
Vrana excited fans with his blazing speed last year, but he did nothing to cement himself in the top six. A strong camp from Burakovsky could help him steal that spot, and playing alongside an excellent two-way forward in Oshie, as well one of the premier playmakers of this generation in Backstrom, could result in 50-60 points for the big Swedish winger.
Some of the NHL's biggest names are signed to contracts that leave fans dumbfounded as to how a player of such high quality could be paid so little. With that in mind, we've put together a salary-cap compliant team filled with players on the most team-friendly contracts in the NHL, but with two exceptions:
Players on entry-level contracts are excluded. Otherwise, the roster would simply be filled with the game's elite young players who've yet to reach their second contract.
Any players in the last year of their current deal are excluded, whether they are set to hit free agency next offseason (e.g. Tyler Seguin), or already signed to a big-money extension that will take effect beginning in the 2019-20 season (e.g. Nikita Kucherov).
So, without further ado, here is the best possible team we can fit under the 2018-19 salary cap ($79.5 million) that's made up of players signed through at least 2019-20 on their current deal and who are beyond their entry-level contracts:
Forwards
Line 1
LW
C
RW
Brad Marchand - BOS ($6.125M)
Nathan MacKinnon - COL ($6.3M)
Mark Scheifele - WPG ($6.125M)
It's quite remarkable all three of these superstars are signed at their bargain cap hits through at least the 2022-23 season. Scheifele, of course, is a center, but the depth down the middle on this team is outstanding, so he shifts to the wing to compliment two Halifax natives in Marchand and MacKinnon.
Line 2
LW
C
RW
Taylor Hall - NJ ($6M)
Aleksander Barkov - FLA ($5.9M)
Rickard Rakell - ANA ($3.789M)
Hall is the reigning Hart Trophy winner, and yet he somehow winds up on the second line here. Meanwhile, Barkov and Rakell are two of the more underrated players in the NHL. Barkov finished fourth in Selke Trophy voting as the league's best defensive forward, while Rakell is quietly coming off back-to-back 30-goal seasons.
Line 3
LW
C
RW
Erik Haula - VGK ($2.75M)
Sean Couturier - PHI ($4.3M)
Josh Anderson - CBJ ($1.85M)
The Flyers gambled on Couturier - handing him a six-year, $26-million contract after a ho-hum 37-point season - but they sure look like geniuses after a breakout 76-point campaign in which he finished second in Selke voting. The third-line wings feature Anderson, a prototypical power forward who can score, and Haula, who had a breakout 29-goal year in the inaugural Golden Knights season.
Line 4
LW
C
RW
Blake Coleman - NJ ($1.8M)
Nazem Kadri - TOR ($4.5M)
Austin Watson - NSH ($1.1M)
Having an effective matchup center in Kadri who's also potted consecutive 32-goal seasons is a luxury, but this team can afford it. Putting him between a takeaway master in Coleman and one of the league's better penalty killers in Watson - despite the latter's off-ice issues - would create an impressive fourth line.
Josi's salary could realistically triple when his contract expires after the 2019-20 season. For comparison, Drew Doughty will become the NHL's highest-paid defender with an average annual salary of $11 million when his extension kicks in a year from now, and while Josi may be a notch below him, he could sign an even bigger contract on the open market due to the rising salary cap. Meanwhile, Jones is coming off a breakout year and is locked up for four more seasons.
Pairing 2
LD
RD
Shayne Gostisbehere - PHI ($4.5M)
John Klingberg - DAL ($4.25M)
The Flyers locked up Gostisbehere after his 2016-17 sophomore slump, but he bounced back with a ridiculous 65 points last season, and he's still just 25 years old. And besides stealing Seguin from the Boston Bruins, Jim Nill's best move as Stars GM was signing Klingberg to a seven-year, $29.75-million contract after his rookie year.
Pairing 3
LD
RD
Mattias Ekholm - NSH ($3.75M)
Ryan Pulock - NYI ($2M)
Ekholm makes it three (and counting) Predators on this squad. Meanwhile, Pulock might be the weak point on the back end of this team, but he's an up-and-comer with one of the league's hardest shots.
Vasilevskiy's 2017-18 campaign was a tale of two seasons, as he starred in the first half but faded down the stretch. Nonetheless, a Vezina Trophy nominee at $3.5 million is an absolute steal. And Saros is seemingly ready to take the reins in Nashville whenever Pekka Rinne gives them up.
Sum of total contracts: $79.44M 2018-19 NHL salary cap: $79.5M
The biggest takeaway from this exercise is that some of the best contracts in the NHL are a result of foresight by general managers who showed faith in young players by locking them into long-term deals before they reached their peaks.
Sure, many contracts on this roster are simply bridge deals, but the most valuable (in terms of length) were signed when question marks remained about whether a player would ever reach his full potential. Couturier, Kadri, Rakell, Josi, and Ekholm are all great examples.
For an in-depth example, let's look more closely at Couturier, who was highly touted and signed his current deal after four seasons of solid defensive work but middling offensive production. His $4.3-million cap hit would've easily been tradeable even if he never progressed, and in the first two years after signing the extension, he yielded similar results. Then, at 25, Couturier found his game a little later than many expected, but now the Flyers have an absolute steal on their hands for four more years.
Sure, there are examples of long-term contracts signed by young players that went horribly wrong. But as long as the annual value isn't outrageous, these sort of risky, long-term contracts tend to age well over time as the salary cap rises - an observation all general managers should be making.
Nashville's David Poile is clearly one of the GMs most willing to hand out such contracts. The Predators lead the way with four players on this roster, and it's no coincidence they've been one of the league's most successful teams over the last few years - and should continue to be - as a result.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images) (Salary information courtesy: Cap Friendly)
