There is lots of debate on Lindholm’s value and whether he is a true 1C or actually just a good 2C. Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and now Toffoli have all had career years playing on his wing. Did these players make Lindholm better? Yes absolutely! But the benefit was reciprocal. It’s weird to see people online celebrating and defending Kopitar’s 2 year $7M AAV extension that doesn’t kick in until his final upcoming $10M AAV is over, while also arguing that Lindholm is not a legit 1C and he isn’t worth big money right now.
Kopitar was given a $10M AAV contract 7 years ago. Look at how his 5-year stats at the time he was awarded his $80M contract compare with Lindholm’s. Identical numbers – age adjusted. I’m not suggesting the Flames pay Lindholm $10M, but this idea that he isn’t a legit top line centre and worth big bucks is hot garbage.
by TheOhGeez
5 Comments
While I don’t want to pay it because we’re already in a cap crunch, Lindholm in the $8 million range would be a good deal for the next 5 or 6 years. Year 7 and 8 could be sketchy depending on how he ages and how the cap evolves.
With that said, my concerns would be eliminated if we could move the Kadri contract.
Nice try Mr. Lindholm’s agent! We still need him to come cheap!
Please tell him to stay… 🥺
Seems like Hanifin is already gone, If we lose Backlund and Lindholm too… This team has some hard years ahead.
I’ve heard that several teams around the league know he is leaving.
League scoring was considerably lower when kopitar got his big money contract. For example, kopitar’s 70 pt season in 2013-14 came when league scoring was an average of 2.67g/game. Today it’s closer to 3.1-3.2 Kopitar has also led his team in scoring 15 times!!! Lindholm has yet to accomplish that once. You can’t just do 1 to 1 comparisons of the two and say it’s close… it really does a disservice to kopitar.
Imo, lindholm is closer to a top 30 centre than top 10. Just giving it a minute of thought: mcdavid, Draisatl, Petersson, mackinnon, point, stamkos, Matthews, Tavares, Crosby, Malkin, Thompson, aho, Barkov, Eichel, hintz, stutzle, Hughes are all better centres, and this wasn’t really given much thought. He’s probably in a similar tier to guys like barzal or kopitar or hischier or scheifle today. Is that worth 9.5m? Idk.
To me, the fact we gave the kitchen sink to Kadri says we should trade him. The flames already have too much money in a 30+ core, and the fact that the rumoured offer of 9m+ has been out there for weeks and we’ve heard nothing from lindholm is kind of telling. Also given that lindholm isn’t the best at carrying the puck and skating (something a centre with huberdeau needs to be rly good at), it just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense unless we are trying to be like San Jose or Detroit without the playoff success lol.