A week after the last 32 Thoughts which described as the “The nicest contract dispute ever”, Elliotte Friedman is back to discuss the latest with the Jets and Cole Perfetti, although to be honest there really isn’t much of an update:
“As for a Perfetti, I didn’t get the sense much had changed on the weekend. I mean, we’ll see. I don’t think Perfetti is quite as dug in as Swayman is and we’ll see what happens early in the week. The Jets were on the road, they went to Edmonton, so I kinda wonder if that slows everything down a bit. We’ll see early in the week. The one thing about Perfetti is, I always wonder about these kinds of things ‘when does everybody worry’, like we talked about how polite this one was, how Perfetti went to the media tour, how he participated in the charity fishing event. Like the one thing I always worry for everybody involved here, when does it turn? Like when does the frustration boil over and how does everybody try to prevent that from happening or work to prevent that from being a problem…”
He then went into the idea of comparables and how the Jets don’t like his comparison of Perfetti to Shane Pinto’s new deal in Ottawa (even though they have similar points/games played) but Winnipeg would see Pinto as a player in a different situation (third contract, not second).
“…but it comes down to a place where everyone’s gotta be comfortable right? The team, the player, the agent and you know we’re not, we’re not there yet but the one thing I just worry about in this case like Swayman, we’ve seen some of the anger boil over. I just think if you’re Winnipeg and Perfetti, you’re like ‘OK how can we prevent that from happening’ especially with a young player. Older players they tend to say it’s business, I’m used to that now, younger players the first time you go through it. It’s always harder.”
Photo Credit: Colby Spence (Illegal Curve)
Worth noting this is what Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun added this morning:
“Don’t believe there was any progress made on a Cole Perfetti extension over the weekend. Both sides dug in. Winnipeg offer too low. Perfetti ask too high. Jets not convinced on any of the compatibles, including Mercer’s short-term AAV and. Guenther’s long-term.”
So now we’ll wait to see if the two sides can get together to get closer together.
