Newsday: Greg Logan reports in the Islanders Newsday blog Sean Bergenheim fired both his agents
(Mark Gandler/Todd Diamond) this week and that General manager Garth Snow just began negotiations toward a contract with his new agent that could make an arbitration hearing unnecessary.
Mr Logan also reports Jeff Tambellini, Frans Nielsen, Jeremy Colliton, Ben Walter and Bruno Gervais have until 5 p.m. Tuesday 7/15 to accept their qualifying offers or negotiate a deal before those offers expire, also Garth Snow said he has deals beyond those initial offers for Tambellini/Gervais, expects to hold talks with Nielsen’s agent and that it’s expected Colliton and Walter will accept their initial offers.
After July 15th if an RFA is unsuccessful negotiating a contract or does not accept his qualifying offer the final option is a holdout.
Mr Logan also asked the Garth Snow if he has any interest in Ladislav Nagy or other unrestricted free agents but the gm did not rule out anything while the beatwriter does some speculating that Radulov's situation may open the door for the Isles to bring in Kirll Petrov.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Fantastic update across the board from Mr Logan and a lot of information the fans want to know about.
I do not know what to take of Bergenheim firing his agents a few days after we had quotes from both of them. Apparently if they were fired earlier this week it had to be right after their comments appeared in Newsday.
Bottom line Bergenheim wants a better contract than he's offered and until it's settled, anything is possible regardless who his agent is.
As for the rest of the players we'll see how this pans out. If they do not come to terms it could open the door for pending trades and there will be players all over the league in the same spot.