In the next off-season, the Canucks announced they had re-signed Bure to a five-year, $24.5 million contract on June 16. The deal was reported to have been signed before game three of the Stanley Cup Finals against New York. It also included Bure's marketing rights and put his father, Vladimir, on the team payroll as a fitness and marketing consultant. The average annual salary of $4.9 million made Bure the league's third highest-paid player, behind Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. In fact, Bure and the Canucks had entered into contract negotiations at the beginning of the 1993–94 season, although two years remained in his original deal. Neither side could come to an initial agreement; one of the major factors was the Canucks' demands for the contract to be in Canadian dollars on account of the American exchange rate. Numerous accusations were made in the media during the Canucks' playoff run that Bure threatened not to play if a contract could not be agreed upon. A "Toronto Star" article, published before the first game of the Finals on May 31, 1994, claimed Bure had signed a five-year, $30 million contract that, if the Canucks had not agreed to, would have seen him pull out of game five of the Conference Finals against the Maple Leafs. The article was followed by two additional claims in the following two days in the Vancouver-based newspaper "The Province" and "Toronto Sun". The "Toronto Sun" held the contract was a five-year, $22.5 million deal, and that it was signed before either game six or seven of the opening round against the Flames after Bure's agent, Ron Salcer, told general manager Quinn that Bure would not play if the deal was not made. As the story continued well into the next season, Pat Quinn appeared in a segment on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)'s "Hockey Night in Canada" on March 27, 1995, publicly denying the claims.