Predators, Evangelista still aren’t close on a new deal

As we are days away from the start of the regular season, there are only nine restricted free agents left unsigned. But only one of those players is expected to get a seven-digit figure, and that’s Nashville Predators winger Luke Evangelista. It’s a bit surprising to see Evangelista of all players stuck in a holdout, so why can’t the two parties come to an agreement on a deal here?

Dave Pagnotta joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about Evangelista and what he’s hearing about why a deal with the Predators isn’t done yet.

Dave Pagnotta: A lot of people are scratching their heads at this one as to why the hell this has taken so long. For most of the summer, [the Predators] tried to focus on a two-year contract. They started at three towards the beginning of the offseason, then migrated to two years.

But the dollars have just been so off. I know there are different reports. There was a $1 million offer, there was a $2 million. I think the numbers got jumbled. My understanding, it was just two years at $2.1, which is what was offered from Nashville from the start, and clearly that won’t get it done.

They spoke this week about a three-year option if they wanted to go that route to see if maybe that would entice things to get closer to the finish line. Still nothing.

Again, a lot of people scratching their heads on this one. I tweeted about it earlier, and I got a bunch of text messages from people around the league going “This should be easy. This should be simple.” But apparently it’s not. Nashville has dug their heels in on this one for whatever the reason, and they’re just not close.

I think a 2x$3 million gets this done, in and around that probably. But again, Nashville is nowhere near that figure. Unless that changes, I really wonder how much more frustrated the player and his camp are going to get before we start to hear about a trade request. It’s not there yet, but I’m definitely wondering what’s going on here from Nashville’s side of things. They may be forcing Luke and his camp to go in that direction.

You can watch the full episode here…