As I stated in one my (rare) summer tweets, the difficulty is that while there’s no denying the impact all these young players have — and that the numbers strongly suggest teams should be investing more heavily in their younger core players and be more careful with players over 30 — it’s not easy to overhaul the system overnight.

Sure, it’s becoming evident the mid-level roster player is going to take a hit in future negotiations as the system recalibrates, but in the meantime, a lot of these teams are carrying some of those mid-level contracts that are taking up cap space. Something has to give.

-Pierre LeBrun on the many unsigned RFAs. More from LeBrun at The Athletic ($$$).