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Puck Update details
Listing ID: 58
Title: Puck Update
Description: Launched in 2002 by Steven Ovadia and dedicated to hockey news.
Category: Recreation : Sports : Hockey
Owner:
listed on: March 31, 2008 02:55:22 PM
Number Hits: 1 times
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| Rangers Need More Experience and Less Salary On Their Blue Line - 2010-09-09 09:27:52 |
Rangers fans love to talk about the Wade Redden contract because it’s such an insanely messed up situation. If they didn’t talk about it, an ulcer might eat through their very souls. I just read the Flames are over the cap and rumors are starting to bubble up about Robin Regehr maybe being on the [...]Related posts:
 Rangers fans love to talk about the Wade Redden contract because it’s such an insanely messed up situation. If they didn’t talk about it, an ulcer might eat through their very souls. I just read the Flames are over the cap and rumors are starting to bubble up about Robin Regehrmaybe being on the trading block, should he decide to waive his no-trade clause. He’s got a cap hit of a little over $4 million/year, with three years left on the deal. There’s not a huge market for a defenseman who costs that much but is basically a stay-at-home, one-dimensional kind of guy. But it just so happens the Rangers could use a defenseman like that. And they’re looking to shed Redden, by trade or by AHL exile. The Rangers have dealt with Calgary before, so why couldn’t a deal get done? Right. Redden’s $6.5 million contract which doesn’t expire until 2014. The contract that makes Regehr look like a bargain. The crazy thing is, I believe Rangers GM Glen Sather will trade Redden. He’s done a miraculous job of trading away untradeable players (Ales Kotalik, Donald Brashear, and Christopher Higgins are but a few of the more recent mistakes Sather has made disappear) and I think he’s not going to eat Redden’s contract until he absolutely has no choice. Of course, the Rangers are already over the cap andhave yet to sign defenseman Marc Staal, a restricted free agent. Unless Staal decides to pay to play, the Redden issue is going to need to be resolved. The Staal negotiations have been interesting to watch. Despite ostensibly being the team’s top defenseman, Staal really hasn’t developed the way the team hoped he would. A lot of that has been inconsistent coaching messages. At times, he’s been asked to step-up as an offensive defenseman, since he has a decent shot. But that’s caused horrible defensive lapses, so at other times, he’s been asked to be a shut-down defenseman, despite not having a lot of size. So rather than focus on really solidifying one aspect of his game before moving onto another, he’s been forced to shift gears, five to ten games at a time. A huge part of that is due to the Staal pedigree. The team expects a lot due to who his brothers are (Eric of Carolina and Jordan of Pittsburgh) and they’ve sacrificed a lot of his development because his brothers came into the league so NHL-ready. They’ve pushed Marc to be a top NHL defenseman when he might have benefitted from a bit of an extended apprenticeship in the AHL. The Rangers have obviously noticed Staal isn’t as complete a defenseman as they would like him to be, but they’ve spent so much time on him, it would be tough to walk away from their investment. Plus, they don’t have many better options. So they need to give him enough of a contract that he feels the team appreciates him, but not a cap-busting contract that would make him difficult to trade should a better opportunity present itself. So the Rangers defense is in an amazing place. They have an NHL-quality defenseman who’ll probably wind up in the AHL for cap-space reasons and a guy who could maybe use some AHL seasoning up in the NHL, so the team can save face (and because of a lack of blue line depth). Suddenly Darryl Sutter’s problems in Calgary don’t seem quite so bad. Related posts:
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| The Three Types of Older Free Agents - 2010-09-06 12:02:40 |
It’s tough being an older guy in the NHL. Or not in the NHL. Owen Nolan, 38, is still waiting for a team to make him an offer. Bill Guerin, almost 40, is skating with the Flyers, although the Flyers aren’t interested in him. Jonathan Cheechoo, only 30, will report to Stars’ training camp on [...]Related posts:
 It’s tough being an older guy in the NHL. Or not in the NHL. Owen Nolan, 38, is still waiting for a team to make him an offer. Bill Guerin, almost 40, is skating with the Flyers,although the Flyers aren’t interested in him. Jonathan Cheechoo, only 30,will report to Stars’ training camp on a tryout. It’s interesting to see those three players as three examples of the types of older players you see in free agency. Nolan is an example of the older player who might be at the end of his career. After scoring 25 goals in Minnesota in 2008-09 (in just 59 games), he scored just 16 goals in 73 games the following season. Prior to that 2008-09 season, Nolan hadn’t scored over 20 goals since 2002-03. Teams are obviously afraid that Nolan is finally out of goals. If his contract had ended after that 25-goal campaign, he might have been able to extend his career. But ending on 16 goals doesn’t seem to be making Nolan attractive enough to any teams. There’s a big psychological difference between 20 goals and less than 20 goals. GMs usually seem interested in a solid 20-something goals (seeGuerin, Billbelow). But less than 20 and they usually feel they have someone else in the organization who can probably pick-up the slack. And while Nolan brings a lot of defense to the table, he’s lost a lot of speed over the years. So basically, Nolan made the huge mistake of ending last season on a down note. That’s something free agents his age can never afford to do. Guerin actually has the opposite problem. His numbers have beentooconsistent and I think teams are scared to be the one where Guerin finally loses his mojo. He’s scored at least 20 goals per season since 2006-07. And while it’s tempting to mention Guerin has played the last two seasons in Pittsburgh, frequently with Sidney Crosby, it’s also worth noting Guerin has a full Islanders season in there, as well as the bulk of a second. It seems GMs just don’t believe Guerin can continue to play at the level at which he’s been playing the past four years. Basically, no one is interested in giving him the chance to fail. That leaves us with Cheechoo, who isn’t as old as Nolan or Guerin, but seems just about as unwanted. Cheechoo is the most frustrating type of free agent: the fixer-upper. He’s just four years removed from a 56 goals season. His production has steadily declined since that year, though. Ottawa traded for him, thinking they could solve his goal production problems. When they couldn’t, they bought him out. The Stars, who saw a lot of Cheechoo in the Pacific division, want to see if Cheechoo still has a goal-scorer in him that they can unlock. Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk is enthralled by the bargain that might exist within Cheechoo. Assuming he’s able to make the Stars out of training camp. Related posts:
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| NHL Cannot Pick and Choose Moments to Enforce Its CBA - 2010-09-03 09:30:09 |
I kind of don’t care about the NHL trying to clamp down on long-term contracts. I think it’s a stupid loophole that teams are exploiting, but I also think it’s one that needs to be closed during contract negotiations, not after. But I can totally get that the NHL wants to make sure everyone works [...]Related posts:
 I kind of don’t care about the NHL trying to clamp down on long-term contracts. I think it’s a stupid loophole that teams are exploiting, but I also think it’s one that needs to be closed during contract negotiations, not after. But I can totally get that the NHL wants to make sure everyone works within the framework of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The NHL obviously feels long-term contracts, like those given to Roberto Luongo and Ilya Kovalchuk, violate the spirit of the CBA, if not the letter. And to be honest, those contracts might even violate the letter. I’m not a lawyer. I still get 12 cassettes a month because of the last contract I signed. But I do want to point out one thing. Back in June of 2008 the Tampa Lightninghired Greg Malone as their head of professional scouting, right around the time they traded for the rights to negotiate with Ryan Malone. Greg Malone, in addition to being a former NHL player and a scout for Phoenix and Pittsburgh, is Ryan’s father. A few days later Ryan signed a seven-year deal with the Lightning. Maybe Ryan would have signed the contract without his dad getting hired in the organization. Maybe Tampa really wanted both Malones. But what if Greg was hired to make Tampa more desirable to Ryan? Then shouldn’t Greg’s salary count against the cap, too? Also, please noteRyan has not indicated his dad’s hiring was a factor in his decision to sign with Tampa. Within the NCAA, this sort of thing is common,but is also a violation of NCAA rules. As far as I know, the CBA has no such rule prohibiting the hiring of family members as a recruitment tool, but it gives teams an unfair advantage, much the way a front-loaded long-term contract does. If the NHL wants to make sure all of its contracts honor the spirit of the CBA, it needs to start looking at all of the contracts that get signed. The league also needs to look at all of the things that happen around a signing. It’s not enough to care when it’s a $100 million contract spread out over six decades. The NHL is either interested in preserving the spirit and integrity of the CBA or it’s not. Up until a few weeks ago, the league seemed to have no interest. Now, suddenly there is interest. Since that’s the case, the league needs to do the right thing and review every contract signed since the lockout. It’s not fair to punish the most recent offenders while possibly missing out on some older ones. Without consistent enforcement of the CBA, the NHL’s actions over the past few weeks will seem downright arbitrary. Related posts:
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