July 1st, 2008 was supposed to be “THE GREATEST SHOPPING DAY IN HOCKEY HISTORY!!!” (TM).
And while things get to be a little over-hyped these days, that wouldn’t even have been an overstatement for the day Jarome Iginla, Joe Thornton, Dany Heatley, Miika Kiprusoff and Marian Hossa all hit the market, along with guys like Robyn Regehr, Sergei Zubov, Lubomir Visnovsky, Dan Boyle, Mike Fisher, Patrick Marleau...
Ok so the Free Agency class of 2008 didn’t end up being quite as strong as some predicted. Or even close actually.
There’s just one goalie who reached thirty wins last year – a mark that 15 goalies hit (Huet, 32).
And two players who scored thirty+ goals (37 year-old Mats Sundin and 35 year-old Brian Rolston who had thirty-two and thirty-one respectively).
And only four UFA defencemen who were in the top sixty in total minutes played among blueliners (Campbell, Rozsival, Redden and Hainsey).
Is there talent available to be had?
Sure.
Are teams going to end up overspending and regretting many of those purchases a couple years down the road when the player fails to consistently perform at the level he did going into his UFA year?
I can guarantee it.
July 1st isn’t the day to build your team. If you have a good team already you’ve got a chance to augment your core group with a player who may cost you more than you want to spend, but at least it won’t cost you any other assets to add that piece. And in that respect, it’s only money – or cap space – and if you’ve got it you may as well use it.
The problem is the expectations that a big contract will bring.
If you sign a #5 or #6 defenceman, don’t expect that all of a sudden he’ll play like a #2 or #3 defenceman just because you’re paying him like one.
For example, and I don’t like to single people out so let’s use fake names...
You’ve got a player named Skoorb Kipro.
Kipro will be twenty-eight by the time the season starts and he’s played four full seasons in the league. He has little offensive skill, indicated by his four goals and thirty-six points in 297 career games.
Kipro performs well in the playoffs and a lot of teams start talking about him. A couple things to think about though..
Skroob was last on his team in minutes played per game among defencemen (under 17 mins per game).
He was 7th out of 8 regulars in minutes played per game on the PK.
If you end up paying Kipro $4 mil+ for the next five years, are you going to be happy with a guy who doesn’t play much on special teams and thus likely won’t be able to log significant minutes over the course of a season?
Another example.. Take Midar Atabrv.
Twenty-seven years old and has played for four teams already.
Arabrv has had exactly one twenty+ goal season in his career – coincidentally his contract year where he scored twenty-seven goals and put-up fifty-six points.
If you sign Atabrv to a long-term multi-million dollar deal, how are you going to feel if he goes back to the player he was prior to this season, the one who scored 12, 13 and 14 goals in three seasons?
One could make a similar case about another fictional player, Salkin Namgah, who scored 10, 8, 10, 8 and 17 in his first five years in the league before potting twenty-seven as well.
Another example (although this one is too late). A guy named Nayr Enolam. Nyar was turning 28 and had compiled 43 goals and 82 points over the past two seasons. Nyar could be compared to a player from years past, let’s call him Nitram Etniopal. Nitram became a UFA when he was turning 28 after putting up 43 goals and 98 points in two years. Nitram was a warrior – a great team guy who was highly sought after. He ended up signing a huge deal and then never topping seventeen goals or forty points again.
BUYER BEWARE.
History is littered with a long list of failed UFA signings.
Sergei Fedorov
Bobby Holik
Martin Lapointe
Alexei Zhamnov
Tony Amonte
Oleg Tverdovsky
Theo Fleury
Pierre Turgeon
Donald Audette
Uwe Krupp
Kevin Hatcher
Steve Duchesne
Sergei Samsonov
Alexander Mogilny
Vladimir Malakhov
Bobby Holik (again)
Valeri Kamensky
Derian Hatcher (again)
Tony Amonte (again)
Petr Nedved
John Leclair
Martin Rucinsky
Mark Messier
Dimitri Mironov
etc, etc, etc
There are far fewer great UFA signings and the best ones are Hall of Fame players who somehow hit the market like Brett Hull, Teemu Selanne, Ed Belfour, Dominik Hasek, Scott Niedermayer, Brett Hull (again), and Ron Francis. If you have a chance to add a player like that you do it at any cost. Sundin or Jagr on a pricey short-term deal? I’d do it.
Sure there are others who have succeeded, guys like Savard, Whitney, Cassels, Brunette, Boucher, Rolston, Kariya, Suter, Joseph, Roberts and Rafalski but many of those players were slightly under-the-radar guys, not the top of the crop available that July 1st – and the successes are far less frequent than the failures.
BUYER BEWARE.
The market is weak, the prices will be high.
There are just ten players who scored twenty goals last year. The average age of those players is thirty-three.
If you want to talk about Hossa, sure I’m interested but at what price and for how long? According to my records, in the history of players switching teams as UFAs there have been fourteen players who have signed for $30 mil+. Last year we had Briere, Gomez, Timonen, Drury, Smyth and Rafalski. The year before it was Chara and Jovanovski. Prior to that there were six:
Bill Guerin - $45 mil
Bobby Holik - $45 mil
Sergei Fedorov - $40 mil
Jeremy Roenick - $37.5 mil
Pierre Turgeon - $32.5 mil
Derian Hatcher - $30 mil
And those certainly seemed like good deals at the time, although slightly pricey.
Now when you get to thinking about a long-term deal, these were the longest of the long prior to last year. How many of these players were worth the money in years 3, 4 & 5?
6 years: Darius Kasparaitis, $27 mil
5 years: 17 players
Bill Guerin, DAL, $45 mil
Bobby Holik, NYR, $45 mil
Sergei Fedorov, ANA, $40 mil
Jeremy Roenick, PHI, $37.5 mil
Zdeno Chara, BOS, $37.5 mil
Pierre Turgeon, DAL, $32.5 mil
Ed Jovanovski, PHO, $32.5 mil
Derian Hatcher, DET, $30 mil
Robert Lang, WAS, $25 mil
Sergei Gonchar, PIT, $25 mil
Jason Arnott, NAS, $22.5 mil
Mike Rathje, PHI, $17.5 mil
Jyrki Lumme, PHO, $17 mil
Vaclav Prospal, ANA, $16.5 mil
Todd Marchant, CBJ, $14.5 mil
Mark Parrish, MIN, $13.25 mil
Luke Richardson, PHI, $12.6 mil
Sure the current UFAs are younger in many cases but now instead of five-year deals we're talking about six and seven-year deals which will take a player into his mid-30s and in some cases beyond.
Getting back to this year’s crop, you can count the number of top three defenders available on one hand.
Ninety-nine D-men averaged over twenty minutes per game this year and only six are on the market.
There’s only one goalie who could start for my team and he’s thirty-three.
If I’m sounding repetitive, it’s only because I’m trying to perform my civic duty to teams everywhere.
It’s not quite The Alamo, but “Remember July 2002”:
Bill Guerin signs with Dallas - 5 yrs, $45 mil
Bobby Holik signs with NY Rangers - 5 yrs, $45 mil
Curtis Joseph signs with Detroit - 3 yrs, $24 mil
Ed Belfour signs with Toronto - 2 yrs, $13.5 mil
Tony Amonte signs with Phoenix - 4 yrs, $24 mil
Robert Lang signs with Washington - 5 yrs, $25 mil
Darius Kasparaitis signs with NY Rangers - 6 yrs, $27 mil
Theo Fleury signs with Chicago - 2 yrs, $8.5 mil
Adam Oates signs with Anaheim - 1 yr, $3.5 mil
Scott Young signs with Dallas - 2 yrs, $7 mil
Luke Richardson signs with Columbus - 4 yrs, $11 mil
Andrew Cassels signs with Columbus - 1 yrs, $2.6 mil
Richard Smehlik signs with Atlanta - 3 yrs, $7.5 mil
Philippe Boucher signs with Dallas - 4 yrs, $9.5 mil
Randy McKay signs with Montreal - 2 yrs, $4.25 mil
Scott Lachance signs with Columbus - 4 yrs, $8 mil
How many of those signings worked out well?
BUYER BEWARE.
Save yourself a boatload of cash - turn off your ringer, go pick up some burgers and beer and celebrate Canada Day the right way with your friends and family. In 48 hours once sanity is restored, that’s the time to start looking for real value and finding the right role players to fit in with your team for the right price.
Now, you’re probably not going to listen to me anyways but just don’t say I didn’t warn you...
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WOW
Was I dreaming or did the Panthers just hand a guy $18.75 mil whose resume reads as follows:
Career Highs: 14 goals, 30 points
Most Recent Season: 14 goals, 26 points
Career Stats: 190 GP, 33 G, 77 PTS
0 playoff games
When Florida was making their annual late (too late) playoff push, Rusty had 0 goals and 0 assists in the Panthers’ final 8 games.
Coincidently, the year prior he also had 0 goals and 0 assists in Florida’s last 8 matches.
In his rookie season of 05-06, Olesz was significantly better over the final eight, putting up 0 goals and 1 assist.
I’m ok with paying for potential but this deal seems way off.
You have to show me something before you get that kind of long-term security...
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RESERVE LISTS & FREE AGENT LIST - DEFENCEMEN
Since I got a good response on the goaltending charts that were posted, I decided to start looking at each team’s blueline. These lists are a work in progress so you can see what teams have excess D and what teams need help in that area. Lists are NOT yet sorted – mostly you’ll see the players under contract from highest cap hit to lowest, followed by recently drafted but unsigned players.
Building up to training camp I’m going to work on a spreadsheets that contains each team’s reserve list in its entirety and then we can look at who will or may make each team along with team needs.
For now you’ll at least be able to see who’s under contract and who’s coming up the pipeline.
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RESERVE LISTS (TO COME) & FREE AGENT LIST - FORWARDS
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RESERVE LISTS & FREE AGENT LIST – GOALIES (re-posted from Sunday)
Many players in the League look forward to the day when they will have the opportunity to become an Unrestricted Free Agent. There's a very good chance that the contract they sign on July 1st or in the days following will be the largest deal of their career.
For a goaltender in the Summer of 2008, July 1st is simply about finding a place to play.
It's a career-altering game of musical chairs with too many goalies, not enough chairs and not much money to go around.
Last season Dan Cloutier, Marc Denis, Ray Emery, Critobal Huet, Olaf Kolzig, Andrew Raycroft and Jose Theodore took home a combined $24.85 million.
This summer they're all looking at substantial pay cuts - they likely won't even earn half of what they made last year in total - and some may have to look to Europe or will start the season in the AHL. (Note Cloutier is disputing his buyout due to injury and even if/when he ends up on the market, it's quite possible that his career is over).
I've gone through team-by-team and tried to compile complete lists of the goaltenders in each organization (remaining contract term and annual cap hit or draft year in brackets). If I've made any errors just let me know as I was going through a lot of information in a short amount of time.
In terms of the depth chart rankings I've mostly based it on seniority and contract status to show who is most NHL-ready, which is why you'll see the '08 draft picks at the bottom of the team lists. As the season gets closer and players are assigned to their various league I'll update the lists so that you have a better idea of where players stand respective to their competitors.
Names and figures compiled using nhlscap.com, nhlnumbers.com, hockeydb.com, The Hockey News Future Watch Issue, hockeysfuture.com, hockey-reference.com.
There are four graphics below that may take a moment or two to load.
Looking at the lists I've identified two available starting jobs and eight backup jobs, although in same cases the third goalie may jump up and claim the #2 job (ie Enroth, McElhinney, Crawford, Stephen, Elliot, Pogge, Schneider) or in others a team may be looking to find a better or more experienced backup (NY Islanders/McDonald, Tampa/Ramo).
OPEN STARTERS JOBS: Colorado, Washington
OPEN BACKUP JOBS: Buffalo, Calgary, Chicago, Dallas, NY Rangers, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver
Competition for those open jobs includes eighteen goalies who played in the league last year: Aebischer, Aubin, Auld, Clemmensen, Cloutier, Conklin, Denis, Emery, Holmqvist, Huet, Joseph, Kolzig, Lalime, Raycroft, Sanford, Theodore, Thibault and Valiquette.
Teams also have the option of making a run at a Restricted Free Agent, an option that has become much more attractive in my opinion as the average salary has climbed, making the compensation ranges less of a deterrent. (RFAs are in red in the above charts).
Here are the updated compensation levels:
Goalies who may (or may not) be available via trade at some point for a team looking to upgrade their tandem: Tim Thomas, Nikolai Khabibulin, Dwayne Roloson, Manny Legace.
Times are tough right now for goaltenders outside of the elite group. Competition is more intense than ever before and teams are reluctant to spend much on backup goalies because of the cap and because the market is over-saturated. Not to mention that four of the last six goalies to play in the Stanley Cup finals were Chris Osgood, Ray Emery, Cam Ward and Dwayne Roloson - which may have caused some teams to change their strategy of trying to build around a franchise goalie.
When the clock strikes 12:01 on July 1st there are agents who are really going to have their work cut out for them.
Because the music is going to stop pretty quickly and there just aren't nearly enough chairs to go around.
Danny -
[email protected]
NOTE: I'll be spending the next couple days on UFAs as we get back to talking hockey and I should have an updated post regarding the Constitution and the Boots Del Biaggio saga for Wednesday AM – Thursday at the latest. I've gotten some great information already and have a call scheduled for Tuesday to get some further clarification on the interpretation of the relevant sections.
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