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Sunday, October 3, 1999
Sens, Yash should talk
Well, not at first, anyway.
Having Alexei Yashin sit in Switzerland doesn't do anybody any good. It doesn't do the Senators -- from a hockey point of view -- any good to have their best player working as an assistant coach in the Swiss league. The chocolates and the banks are first rate, but the hockey, well, it's not the NHL, you know?
It doesn't do Yashin any good, either, except to find out what it's like from a coach's perspective. Funny how those players sometimes do things the way they want to do them, the coach be darned.
The Senators and the Yashin camp should be talking now. Maybe the situation looks entirely hopeless with both sides an ocean apart both figuratively and literally.
Yashin won't play unless he gets a contract extension. The Senators won't talk until he's played the bulk of the final year of his existing contract.
There seems to be room for a compromise there in which everyone can save face, but only if the two sides get some dialogue going.
Both sides have emphatically made their point.
But both sides have as much to lose as to gain. The Senators are a team that is very close to being a Stanley Cup champion. They would need a lot of things to go their way to make that happen. They are quite capable of having a respectable regular season without their captain. But there is no way they are going to get within a sniff of the Cup without Yashin in their lineup.
For Yashin, sitting out a year at this point in his career, just when he is coming off a breakthrough season, is going to set him back. There is room for compromise.
Yashin has said he'll play this year under the terms of his contract, but he needs assurances there will be a contract extension in the future.
The Senators have said they'll only talk about a new deal once most of this season is done. Surely there's enough wiggle room there for everybody to come out of this deal happy.
But only if they talk and talk soon.
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