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Generally diving into free agency does more harm than good as you often have to overpay for players - in both dollars and term - that in most cases have already played their best hockey.
The reason for that, of course, is because teams are always looking for quick fixes and to improve their team now any way possible. This leads to a plethora of teams fighting over a handful of players and inflates the prices as a result.
Every year there are exceptions, though, in that a handful of solid players don't produce down the stretch, struggle over a small sample in the playoffs, shoot an unsustainably bad percentage, etc. and their asking price drops as a result.
One guy who, for whatever reason, saw his value take a big dive is Jiri Hudler.
Despite being one of the top-20 scorers at 5 v 5 over the last couple years he had to wait more than a month for a contract and was only able to bargain for a one-year term at $2 million.
That's a price a lot of teams should have willingly been able to pay; the Calgary Flames included.
I know the Flames are tight for cap but they could have cleared that money by, say, buying out Lance Bouma or simply electing not to sign Troy Brouwer.
The latter is generally good for 15-20 goals per season and does bring a physical presence but his value was inflated due to his showing in the playoffs. As a result the Flames had to pony up $4.5 per for four years to get his signature.
While Brouwer is younger than Hudler he is less effective and I think giving the latter a couple years at half the cost would have been a much better idea than signing Brouwer. The numbers back me up.
As you can see Hudler is a much better player in all aspects of the game at 5 v 5. Playing with Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau, if that's how the Flames use Brouwer, will certainly help and he will chip in but it's clear Hudler is the better player right now.
When you factor in Hudler could have been had at a fraction of the cost it's tough to say he wouldn't have been a better option than Brouwer.
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