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Anaheim Ducks Frederik Andersen & Hampus Lindholm Contract Extension Talks On Hold For Now

By Griffin Foster

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Anaheim Ducks general manager Bob Murray was busy during the offseason, building a contending roster for the upcoming season while also planning for the future. Part of that planning involved financial structuring, ensuring his ability to extend the contracts of his upcoming free agents.

At the draft, Murray traded Kyle Palmieri and Emerson Etem, 2 of his 11 upcoming 2016 restricted free agents. He then began extension talks with others.

First it was the Ducks biggest 2016 unrestricted free agent, Ryan Kesler, who received a massive 6 year $41.25 million dollar extension. With that deal done, Murray then turned to his nine most notable 2016 restricted free agents.

Defensemen Josh Manson received a 2 year $1.65 million dollar extension. Then came goaltender John Gibson, who received a 3 year $6.9 million dollar deal. Finally, Murray came to terms on a new deal with defensemen Simon Despres, this time it was a 5 year $18.5 million dollar extension.

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Murray now sits with six 2016 restricted free agents, all of which have begun to prove their value to the Ducks. Rickard Rakell, Jiri Sekac, Chris Wagner and Sami Vatanen all look to be apart of Murray’s future plan, but none sit atop the Ducks GM’s to-do list.

Frederik Andersen and Hampus Lindholm are unquestionably Murray’s most valuable assets, the players with the highest offer sheet risk come next summer when the two hit restricted free agency.

While Murray would probably love to get extensions for both done sooner rather than later, talks may be put on hold for the time being due to an issue that is out of Murray’s control.

In his most recent “30 thoughts” piece, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman discussed a legal issue involving 4sports & Entertainment, which represents both Freddie Andersen and Hampus Lindholm.

According to Friedman and a court house service report, former NHL’er Claude Lemieux and his sports services company 4sports & Entertainment, are being sued by agent Rich Winter.

The legal issue which Winter has filed to sue Lemieux over is both in depth and complicated, but here is what you need to know about the parts that pertain to Andersen and Lindholm. Here’s the full story that I will summarize.

  1. Claude Lemieux is not an NHLPA Certified Agent, Rich Winter is.
  2. Winter claims that an agreement was made between he and Lemieux. That agreement was said to run until December 2019.
  3. The agreement according to Winter was said to be one that claimed 4sports and Lemieux would pay Winter and his company, Wintersports Ltd., a fee and in exchange 4sports would get “agent services for North American hockey players”.
  4. Andersen and Lindholm are two North American hockey players that Winter would then give agent services to.
  5. Winter then goes on to claim that Lemieux breached their agreement by contacting an NHL general manager regarding the contract negotiations of two NHL players.
  6. Lemieux also supposedly told clients to not contact Winter due to him having “bad relationships with certain NHL teams”, one of which was named to be the Anaheim Ducks.
  7. Winter concludes by saying that Lemieux therefore did not follow the NHL and NHLPA rules because Lemieux is not a certified agent and Winter was supposed to be the one in contact with general managers during negotiations.

That’s a lot to take in, I know, but here is a short summary.

Winter is an NHLPA Certified Agent while Lemieux is not. The two made an agreement that Winter would offer agent services to 4sports hockey clients, making Lemieux’s contract discussions a violation which led to this legal matter. Lemieux plans to fight these allegations.

Winter and Lemieux are obviously no longer working together.

In that same “30 thoughts” article, Freidman claims that the “split (between Winter and Lemieux) affected Anaheim’s negotiations (with Andersen and Lindholm)”.

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The other interesting aspect of this is that Lemieux is now filing for agent certification with the NHLPA which would then allow him to discuss the contracts of both Andersen and Lindholm who for now remain clients of his company 4sports.

However, Friedman also says in his article that due to the “split”, both Andersen and Lindholm will now have to choose between Winter and Lemieux or find a different agent.

Until a decision is made by Andersen and Lindholm, talks between the two and Murray look to be on hold.

This is a tough decision for both Andersen and Lindholm as both are in line to receive very significant deals, choosing the right agent to negotiate that deal on their behalf is a decision you’d lose sleep over.

One additional note is that Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf is a client of Rich Winter’s company. Could this potentially influence Andersen and Lindholm to jump ship if they are given the opportunity or will they stay on board with 4sports if Lemieux becomes certified?

Regardless of the agent decision they make, I would not expect Andersen or Lindholm to come to terms on a new deal anytime soon.

This is significant as the focus starts to shift elsewhere and the way I see it, Bob Murray now has two options.

  1. Wait. He can wait until things are sorted out between Andersen, Lindholm and their agents before discussing deals with anyone else.
  2. Start getting deals done elsewhere. Murray can look to Rakell, Sekac, Wagner or Vatanen and decide which one’s he knows he can get deals done with that will in no way effect his ability to extend Andersen and Lindholm.

Regardless, welcome to the complicated waiting game.

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