We Might Never Again See an NHL Offer Sheet With How Badly The Hurricanes Bodybagged the Canadiens and Their Attempt to Sign Away Sebastian Aho

The Canadiens have announced that they have tendered an offer sheet to restricted free agent Sebastian Aho of the Carolina Hurricanes. The proposed contract is for five years, with an average annual value of $8.454 million.#GoHabsGo

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) July 1, 2019

Breakdown of Aho offer sheet: $11.3M SB plus 700k salary in Year 1; $9.87M SB plus 700k salary in Year 2; $6.95 SB plus 750k salary in Year 3; $5.25 SB plus $750k in each of Year 4 and Year 5

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) July 1, 2019

Waddell on offer sheet: "It's certainly a surprise, it's a surprise it wasn't more. Literally we got the email at 2:40 today so all people are not fully aware yet."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 1, 2019

Waddell: Aho is our best player and we want to keep him longterm. If you go back in time I think every offer sheet but one was matched.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 1, 2019

Waddell: I know my summer just got better because I'm not going to spend all summer working on a contract now.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 1, 2019

Waddell says he doesn't know if they'll use all seven days to match the offer sheet, signing right away allows the other team to sign more players and (smirks) "maybe I don't want to help them out right now"

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 1, 2019

Waddell strutted into this pre-set press conference like “how is everyone’s day?” 20 minutes after he received an offer sheet and started dishing out the one liners. You love to see it

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 1, 2019

Will we match the offer sheet for Sebastian Aho?

— Carolina Hurricanes (@NHLCanes) July 1, 2019

Folks, I can tell you that Hurricanes team executives were literally cheering about how easy the offer sheet would be to sign. It doesn't matter who is saying what right now.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

The Hurricanes are matching the offer sheet and an announcement is coming within the hour.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

"There was no concern at any point that we would not be able to match this contract. Once again, the Carolina Hurricanes should not be underestimated. We have a plan and all the resources to win a Stanley Cup.” - Don Waddell from the top rope

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Waddell: Sebastian never wanted to leave Raleigh, the agent felt that this would move the needle down the road.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Waddell: "I truly believe this was driven by the agent. He had a finite time to sell what he was saying and he did. And now we move forward."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Waddell: "I truly have a hard time understanding this whole thing"

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Dundon: "This sounds terrible but writing that check is no big deal. The fact that you're (Canadian media) asking me if 20 million is a lot might be how we got in this situation."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Dundon: "If this was a test...it was an easy one."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

I asked Dundon if he's worried this strains things with Aho's agent going forward:

"I couldn't care less about Sebastian's agent. It doesn't matter at all."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Tom Dundon: "There's no scenario where Sebastian Aho doesn't want to be on the Hurricanes. If he said that it would be different but he didn't. The fact that an agent said it means that there's no credibility to it, number one."

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) July 2, 2019

Checked in with Habs to see if Marc Bergevin has any response to developments today on the Aho situation. He will not be making any statements today.

— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) July 2, 2019

And that, my friends, concludes your two day emasculation of a once-proud, long-storied franchise that might have the most wins in NHL history but couldn't save themselves from taking one of the most monumental L's. I was half kidding about never seeing another offer sheet throughout a league that has stigmatized them in such a way that the signing of one is comparable to the targeted spreading of an STD. However, I'm probably not far off with how savagely the "bunch of jerks" running a small market team in the South are do-si-doing atop the occupied cap space of an Original Six organization.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Marc Bergevin looks like a complete buffoon, as he presumably got duped by an agent into doing Don Waddell's job for him in inking a point-per-game centerman in Sebastian Aho to a ridiculously reasonable deal to stay in Carolina for the next five years. There's dumb, and then there is insulting your own intelligence. Which category do you think front-loading a contract in an attempt to price-out an owner that, without so much as a second thought, sunk $70 million into the fool's errand that is trying to contend with the NFL falls under? I'll give you a hint, it's the one that allows the entirety of the Carolina Hurricanes' front office to publicly bend you over their knee and mix in abject mockery between metaphorical spanks with the wooden spoon while your negotiation tactics get laughed out of the room louder than Dr. Evil's. 

A team that is no stranger to being the butt of the joke is basically sitting on the head of a legendary franchise like the Montreal Canadiens and belly laughing while bullying them without even having to lift a finger until Monday. Knowing how tight-assed NHL GM's are when it comes to the attempted robbery of restricted free agents, I can't imagine such a relentless roasting does anything to make them unclench any time soon. Though, I suppose the easy way to avoid being victimized by a similar spectacle would be to spend two seconds on a Google search of a team owner's net worth or six seconds scanning their salary cap situation before finalizing something as intricate as an offer sheet. 

We didn't really get an offer sheet. We just got a lesson in how not to offer sheet.

— Matt Larkin (@THNMattLarkin) July 2, 2019