Who looks worse in contract standoff between Nashville Predators and Luke Evangelista?

All of the high profile restricted free agents in the NHL have gotten signed, and only Luke Evangelista and the Nashville Predators remain the team's regular season opener now just one week away.

This contract dispute even has the top NHL insiders either left speechless or just left openly admitting they don't know what's going on either with this, like Frank Seravalli:

David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports that Evangelista and the Predators still remain far apart even though a two-year deal looks to be agreed upon.

The two more prominent RFAs that just got new deals from their respective clubs recently are Mason McTavish with the Anaheim Ducks and Luke Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. McTavish received a six-year deal at a $7 million AAV, while Hughes got a seven-year deal at an AAV of $9 million.

I think we can all agree those two deals were much more complicated and lucrative that want Evangelista is going to get, regardless if it's here in Nashville or elsewhere.

We don't have all the details, but neither Luke Evangelista or the Nashville Predators look great in this contract standoff

So what really is the hold up here? As you can probably gather, it's hard to say. This whole negotiation was kept hidden behind closed doors for most of the offseason. No real updates for a while, and then finally there was speculation that it was about term and not actual contract value.

GM Barry Trotz was said to want a longer term contract, while Evangelista understandably wants a shorter term deal. But now that it is being reported that two years is the benchmark, then it appears that it is about actual money per year. And the two sides still have a sizeable gap from what we're seeing from reports.

I was full on Team Evangelista in the early going of this process. I always though that three years at $3 million per, or maybe just slightly over $3 million to get it done, was a fair spot to land at for both sides. That gives Evangelista his prove it years and also doesn't trap him in Nashville for too long.

With that proposed deal, Evangelista gets his chance to up his value over the next two years and even become a valuable trade commodity by Year 2 or Year 3. However, if the two sides eventually come to an agreement on two years and Evangelista is over-asking for his value, then I'm jumping off of Team Evangelista.

Now, just because I'm jumping off the Evangelista side doesn't mean I'm running straight to Team Trotz, either. He has fumbled yet another important task for the team. He has let this drag on far too deep into the offseason to the point where Evangelista has missed almost all of training camp, something the 23-year-old really needed.

Even if Evangelista gets signed at the 11th hour and suits up for the season-opener, it's going to most likely damage his readiness for the regular season. Sure, he's probably been training on his own time while waiting this out, but it's not the same as being there in training camp with your teammates. Especially considering that he was in the running to be an important top-six player possibly on a line with Steven Stamkos and Fedor Svechkov.

Evangelista hasn't earned that NHL reputation yet to be holding out for a little more money. Is he or his agent shooting too high?

This is a bad look for Evangelista just as much as it's a bad look for the Predators front office right now. I'm sure we'll eventually learn more of the details on why it has gotten to this, but until we learn those details, it looks terrible for both.

Evangelista looks selfish and holding the team hostage when he hasn't reached that level of NHL prosperity to be holding out like this. He is exactly a 0.5 point-per-game player in three seasons, or carries an 82-game point pace of 41 points. It was always thought that this next contract would be a bridge deal for him to prove it and really get that massive pay raise after that.

That doesn't mean you let Trotz off the hook here. He looks inept and in over his head at best here. If he was being honest when he said that Evangelista is very important to the Predators' long-term future, then how does he let it drag out like this?

Also, Trotz expecting to sign Evangelista to a long-term deal was an unrealistic place to start anyway. To that degree, I don't fault Evangelista at all. Three years always made sense, and it should've been a fairly easy deal to get done back in July, and certainly sometime in August at the latest.

This Evangelista holdout also sends a ripple effect to the starting lineup. He's not just some rotational bottom-six player that you can easily healthy scratch. For a team that is going through a large transition phase, they needed Evangelista suited up and ready for the total training camp while taking vital reps with Nashville's top-six veterans. So much for that.

I keep telling myself they're going to get this done before the regular season starts. Every week I say, "they're going to get it done this week", and I've been wrong everytime. I did raise some mild concern even in the early going of the offseason that this wasn't taken care of promptly, but I never envisioned it reaching October with no deal.

If Evangelista actually ends up missing regular season games from this, then I don't know how you recover from it. At that point, you cut your losses. Again, until all the details come out it's hard to take one side over the other, but we can admit that neither side looks good right now.

Figure something out or make a trade. Don't let this get deep into the regular season with Evangelista missing games. It will be an even bigger distraction than it already is.