I sorta agree.

First, good article…yeah…you kind of did talk yourself out of it a bit. Most of those guys are no better than, and in some cases worse than, Big Willie. Well…not all…but he is in the neighborhood!

I think he signs for around what he makes, but not for 5 years.

Say, 3 years, 11 nil…gets a minor raise, if after 3 years he is still as good, sign him to one year deals until he wants to retire.

He does WANT to stay at home right?

He does WANT to stay at home right?

That hasn’t stopped Canucks from leaving before! If this drags on till July 1, somebody is going to throw a higher offer at him. Then we’ll see where his “loyalties” lie.

Speaking of loyalties, what’s up with the fact that Yankee Canuck now lives in San Fran, whereas I, Beantown Canuck, now live in New York? This website isn’t making any sense any more.

I am one of those who recommended a raise.
Here is the reason:
When you are part of an organization for a considerable time, and you pride yourself in doing a very good job, you expect that management respects you and thinks highly of you. This is human nature, and applies for every job, not just hockey.

How can management show respect? Well, they can always praise you, but talk is cheap. So you can only tell that they honestly mean it, if they put their money where their mouth is…meaning that you get a raise.

So, in order for Mitchell to feel respected and trusted, a raise is necessary. Not really for improving his quality of life, but this is rather a matter of honor and pride.

Having said that, I think that the raise should be a small one. As small as possible, so that the cap doesn’t take a painful hit, but large enough, so that Willie’s pride stays intact. May be a150,000 – 200,000 raise? He is in prime of his career, and this is as high as it is going to get. In addition to this small raise, management should also offer a good explanation as to why the raise cannot be larger: building a championship team means sacrifice from both sides, players and management alike.

I’m glad you brought this up. Mitchell is one of my favourite players too and there has been little discussion about his contract.

At this point I feel that all the balls are in Gillis’ court. It’s no secret Mitchell loves playing here and has bought into the system. While he could for sure get more money if he waited to July 1st, I think he’d be willing to sacrifice some cash if the Canucks gave him a fair offer.

This is the kind of player you need on a team that hails ‘defense first’. Can you imagine AV coaching his style without a Willie Mitchell type player. He’s a leader (my original choice for Captain), a tough guy (Youtube Iginla Mitchell fights for proof), and the only BC boy on the team. Top that off with the fact that there is nobody on the team or in the system that can step in and fill this role, therefore if we lose him we have to replace him.

I don’t think he’ll ask for much more than he is making now and if they add some length to it (3-4 yrs) they could frontload it.

I voted raise and agree with both AttilaS and Twincest in their analyses. A + 29 last year? Awesome! I guess I had forgotten that stat. For that and for his consistently hard work, I’d give him a small raise.

It would be great if he takes a little hometown discount (~2.8-3.0M?) in order to leave some room to re-sign the likes of Kesler, Raymond and UFA signings in the off-season. I don’t think he should be making more than Edler (3.25M) or Ehrhoff (3.1M) because he doesn’t bring it offensively, and in the salary cap world you can’t spend too much on a shut-down D-man and the D-corp as a whole. Otherwise, you’re not gonna have enough upfront (kinda like now) or have to find some great deals (read: reclamation projects like Dan Cleary).

I wouldn’t mind too much if he got the same money but a raise not so much (as much as I like him). I’m sure he can get 4.0M+ from some desperate team out there if all he cares about is the money (I doubt that he does). The other option is to get rid of someone (Bieksa or Salo) in order to keep Willie, which I would be perfectly fine with.

Another idea: Any chance of a long-term deal that will frontload his contract and keep his cap hit down? Like 7 years $18M (4M, 4M, 4M, 3M, 1M, 1M, 1M) for a nice cap hit of 2.57M. He’ll only be 33 when the season ends so we won’t get Pronger’d, haha.

Another idea: Any chance of a long-term deal that will frontload his contract and keep his cap hit down? Like 7 years $18M (4M, 4M, 4M, 3M, 1M, 1M, 1M) for a nice cap hit of 2.57M. He’ll only be 33 when the season ends so we won’t get Pronger’d, haha.

Yeah, I would be down with that. Bit of a shorter term though.

Dude you are calling Reghr an overpayment? Just because he has similar stats to mitchell doesn’t mean they are on the same level. And there’s a reason why only one of them is getting team canada consideration.

Yeah, I am calling Regehr an overpayment. Sure, he gets Olympic nods but at some point you can’t be paying a D-man with no offensive upside $4 million. It’s a cap world. He better be decent at both.

Though I am sure Willie would respond with a "whatchu talking about Willis!.

But yeah, though according to his stats… http://www.nhl.com/ice/player.htm?id=8460503#&navid=nhl-keymatch

he never got 40 in his career. Still scored enough goals though…