As Day 1 of BRHL free agency auction process comes to a close, without a doubt, alot of action and money thrown around.

As the world has become bolder, so have the actions and attitudes of our GMs.  Very few are shy to speak their mind and heated conversations in the group chat have been very interesting.  The exciting offseason continues with free agency and the drama that can unfold.

Here are some highlights:

Biggest salaries

Patrice Bergeron    $22,800,000S

Steven Stamkos    $22,500,000

Elias Pettersson    $20,000,000

Evgeni Malkin    $16,478,000

John Tavares    $14,107,500

Max Pacioretty    $14,107,500

Mattias Ekholm    $13,750,000

Nazem Kadri    $13,250,000

Claude Giroux    $10,45,000

David Perron    $8,025,000

Joe Pavelski   $8,025,00

Interesting to see only one defenseman on this list.  Also interesting to see one restricted free agent on this list.  This year is all about the top line Centres available in free agency.

Most bids on a player:

Claude Giroux with 5 bids and from 5 different teams!

Honorable mention to Jonathan Toews with 5 bids from 4 different teams.

Second honorable mention to Frederick Gaudreau with 5 bids from 3 different teams.

RFA's are extremely popular this year.  The Kraken and their GM decided to play hardball with their young free agents, and teams look to be drooling at the opportunity.  Elias Pettersson, Rasmus Dahlin, Miro Heiskanen, Kailer Yamamoto, have received extremely generous restricted free agent offers in an unprecedented attack and attempt to poach from our beloved Seattle GM.  As tempting as compensation may be and as upset that Mr Rex will be, I believe all these attempts, similar to the many that have tried in the past, will be futile.

Sign and trade deals for other restricted free agents look to be in full bloom again this season.  I love these deals.  They generally involve players in their prime and force teams to find mutually beneficial deals....all with the sole purpose of lowering the players' salaries from their rfa calculator salary.  As a GM/owner, I hate seeing player salaries that keep rising.  It puts strain on the entire system and the only ones who benefit from rising salaries are the players; definitely not the team GMs or owners.

Like I mentioned before, our brhl GM's are not shy to take some risks and that is evident by the amount of money being thrown at these free agents.  It's almost like the real NHL where teams seem to have a bottomless appetite to spend and overspend in search of the championship or simply due to greed.

Please enjoy!

Love

Leon