Idiots
July 1st, 2008 by Jason ChenI’m so pissed off at what’s happened today that I don’t even know where to begin. Let me just first get this out of my system: Darren Pang is an idiot.
The biggest surprise, and I don’t mean that in a good way, is Cliff Fletcher throwing $3.5m/year for four years to Jeff Finger, who has barely any experience in the NHL, let alone talent, to justify that contract. I don’t know if Fletcher forgot his reading glasses or just has chicken-scratch writing, but no matter how he spins it, this has got to be one of the worst signings I’ve ever seen. Finger toiled in the AHL for four years before he saw any kind of big league action, and mustered only 8 goals and 19 points in 72 games last year. Finger will now earn more than Niklas Kronwall, who gets $3m/year. I simply don’t understand it. Cliff Fletcher is an idiot.
You’d think that with Nikolai Khabibulin’s $6.75m counting against your cap you would be wise enough to at least wait until his contract is up next year before you make your next big free agent goalie splash. Wrong. Cristobal Huet’s $5.6m cap hit means that he will earn almost as much as Miikka Kiprusoff and more than Martin Brodeur. While Huet has been one of the more consistent goalies in the league, you can’t justify this contract either. The Caps were smart enough to get a cheaper option in Jose Theodore, who signed for $4.5m/year. Now that the Hawks also have Brian Campbell in the fold with a ridiculous $7.1m/year contract, they’re actually already $6m over the cap, and Pang thinks Dale Tallon should stand pat and keep both goalies? Where’d they find this guy. Dale Tallon is an idiot.
The best forward in the league is not Mats Sundin, nor is it Jaromir Jagr, yet the Canucks find it justifiable to offer the 37-year old a $20m contract? The Swedish centre may be destined for the Hall, but how is spending half of your free cap space on a single player smart when you have other holes to fill? With the departure of Markus Naslund and Brendan Morrison, the Canucks think that Sundin is the answer to them both? Do the Canucks not realize that if Sundin retires in the middle of his contract the remaining money will still count towards their cap for the full amount? I know Mike Gillis promised to be bold and aggressive in the market, but this just isn’t smart spending. So far he’s still done nothing, other than give the summer’s first offer sheet and struck out on deals for Olli Jokinen and Erik Cole. With the offer sheet to David Backes, the Canucks will have roughly $2.2m tied up for the next seven days in a crucial free agency signing period in which they’ll have to await the Blues’ decision on the offer sheet. I fail to see how signing an aging 37-year old centre who is very likely to cash in on his final NHL contract will dig Vancouver out of its playoff woes. Mike Gillis is an idiot.
Oren Koules has been great in bringing in new players and giving the city some hope for their team next year. He’s been aggressive and brought in players for reasonable contracts. However, with all the influx of players (did he really need Radim Vrbata?) there’s already talk about him shopping Dan Boyle and Mike Smith, who was the main piece in the Brad Richards deal for Tampa. It seems like all of a sudden the Bolts decided to hell with their defense and goalies, let’s just hope their offense can outscore their opponents by a score of 10-9. It looks like Olaf Kolzig’s going to be the answer to all their problems, and he hasn’t posted a SV% better than .910 since before the lockout, which I guess means the Bolts will actually be winning their games by a score of 15-14, and not 10-9. The Bolts were caught in a rut when they committed too much money to too few players. Now they’re stuck in a rut again by committing too much money to too many forwards. Have they not learned a single thing? Jay Feaster is an idiot.
These GMs are pissing their money away. In a perfect free agency world everything is relative, but right now, nothing is.
The big winners today? Kevin Lowe for making three great deals to bring in grit and skill, Ken Holland for retaining a born-again Brad Stuart, and Francois Giguere and George McPhee for filling their team needs.
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5 Responses to “Idiots”
By Steve on Jul 1, 2008
Jason… chill out, the Finger thing isn’t quite what it seems. Go check out my discussion of who he was stuck behind in the Colorado system before he broke into the NHL in the comments section for a bit more info.
Fletcher isn’t retarded… seriously. Leafs fans (and us pundit types) need to relax a bit on this one.
By Troy on Jul 1, 2008
Wow. That’s 5 idiots in this article.
In all honesty, I think the Lightning are being fueled more by Koules and his promise to be “aggressive”. However, putting Boyle and Smitty on the block is ridiculous. Why the hell did the Lightning get Smith? To try to get a young netminder for the future and fix a position that has been awful since the lockout ended. Why did they keep Boyle? He’s a premier puck-moving defenceman. So, because Feaster and Koules are so insistent on Ryan Malone and Radim Vrbata and Brian Rolston, he’s saying “screw the defence and goal, let’s just throw out some scoring juggernaut”. That’s what got me a bit irked about the free agency so far. All my pleasure of having Boyle and Smith looks like it can be shoved right out the frikkin window. Good f***** job management. I’m really proud
By the way, I couldn’t agree with Pierre McGuire more on Detroit and their management. They do it the right way. They manage their finances. They always ice a competitive team. The fact that no one has copied that type of management shows of all the idiots that dot NHL front offices from Vancouver to Ottawa to Miami to Los Angeles.
By Troy on Jul 1, 2008
By the way, if your looking for another idiotic signing. How in the world does Wade Redden, 31 year old, on the decline the past two years, get a 6 YR/39 MIL DEAL? If this was after 05/06, much more understandable. Now? Ludacris
Heh, the Rangers are just like they were back in 2003. Spend, spend, spend. 69 mil to Redden and Roszival
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1027983/index.htm
By Jason C on Jul 1, 2008
Well, see, the Redden signing I can sort of understand, partly because we all knew that he was going to fetch this kind of price anyway. Given the Rangers’ lack of good defensive depth, it could be an okay signing. Perhaps a change of scenery will do Redden good, but everyone knows that in all seriousness this guy isn’t worth $6.5m.
The reason I’ve called these guys idiots is because they’ve made signings that may potentially put themselves in a bad, bad situation. The Hawks and Bolts are already feeling the heat, with the Hawks already a whopping $6m over the cap. Finger’s signing wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just one year, but if Finger doesn’t pan out (meaning he doesn’t put up 35+ points, otherwise he’d get roasted alive by Leafs Nation), Fletcher’s going to have a lot of trouble unloading him. Sure, he can buy him out, but why go through the trouble in the first place? The Leafs still have to solve the McCabe problem with his giant contract, but in the meantime they decided it’d be a good idea to commit another $3.5m to a third-pairing defenseman. It just doesn’t make any sense.
The Bolts did an excellent job until I heard they traded for Rolston’s rights and signed Vrbata. Where in the world do they get this kind of money? By my count they’ve already got 12 forwards under contract, and that’s not including guys like Ryan Craig, Stamkos, and Evgeny Artyukhin. With Rolston and Vrbata coming in they say Boyle and Smith’s on the block? I don’t get it either.
Detroit holds the golden standard for running organizations. The rest of the league’s just too dumb. And they don’t have a Hakan Andersson either.
By Brad on Jul 1, 2008
You’re dead on about the lightning. It’s 7-6 every night or bust for them.
And the Stars send their love to Chicago, thanks for getting Campbell out of the Pacific.