All about that Face-to-Face meeting 🤝 #gokingsgo #nhl

Yeah, I mean I think it just goes to show you sometimes that face-toface meetings can really help a process. I mean there had been a pretty open dialogue since the summer between Adrien Kempy’s agent JP Barry of CIA and and the Kings management led of course by Ken Holland the GM. But Ken Holland and JP Barry met face to face Thursday afternoon here in Toronto ahead of the Kings game uh against the Leafs. JP Barry is based here in Toronto and I think that really helped things. I mean there was still work to be done after that meeting and I I did some reporting on it that day. But I think looking back now because what we now know is that then the two sides spoke again Friday, Saturday and finally Sunday afternoon uh Eastern time zone is when this deal finally got agreed to as far as AEV and then there was work to be done on the the structure and the breakdown and all that. But um you know it it it probably took longer than both sides would have predicted at the start of the summer. Um I I think that Martin Niches when he signed his extension last month for 11.5 million a year that had a pretty big bearing on this negotiation. I think it helped both sides agree on where the new NHL landscape was heading. There were other contracts as well, but certainly that was a fresh one. And you know, for a while, even last week, you know, I think the Kings were more in the 9.5 million range and I think JP Barry was more in the 11.5 million range where Martin Nichas had signed and uh they found they found a middle ground there at 10.625 million a year. Uh and really at the end of the day, you know, as Adrien Kempe himself told me on Thursday morning after the skate in Toronto, he was confident a deal would get done eventually that uh he had no intention of leaving LA. And at the same time, there’s a lot of pressure on the Kings to sign him given that captain Andre Kopitar is retiring at the year. You can’t live in the world in which you’re losing Kopitar and Campy. And you know, there’s not a lot on the UFA market. July 1st, all the big names have signed pretty much.

Find Us 👇
Instagram: http://instagram.com/lakings
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lakings
Facebook: http://facebook.com/lakings
Web: http://lakings.com

#LAKings #NHL #GoKingsGo

1 comment
Leave a Reply