How should the Canucks approach negotiations with their 3 veteran UFAs?
Like so many things in so many industries, the normal logic of the professional hockey business has been flipped on its head over the past 15 months. And arguably no specific area of the on-ice product has been more dramatically impacted than unrestricted free agency.For a generation, unrestricted free agency was a mugs game for NHL teams. A necessary evil, at best.Between 2009 and 2019, nearly 80 percent of all unrestricted free agent (UFA) contracts resulted in NHL teams overpaying for wins, according to some eye-opening research by The Athletics Dom Luszczyszyn. Only one in five UFA contracts from the past decade returned surplus value to the team placing it.The offseason of 2020 was a rude awakening, a significant rupture.