Follow @james_tanner123 This past week the Coyotes re-signed their last remaining restricted free-agent, Brandon Gormley, signing him to a one year extension for 850 K.
After signing the deal, Don Maloney said this:
Coyotes GM Don Maloney on 23-year-old defenseman Brandon Gormley: "He's at a stage where it’s ether fish or cut bait, to be honest."
— Craig Morgan (@craigsmorgan) July 30, 2015Now, what I think is wrong with this is that Maloney has the "prove it" mentality that I find myself constantly arguing with readers of this blog about. If you have a guy with the talent of a Brandon Gormley, it makes more sense to bet on him than against him.
Otherwise you just end up paying for past performance and giving your own players market-value contracts.
Right now, the Coyotes could have locked him up for several years at a cheap deal, thus betting on their own guy to succeed and cashing in if he does. Since the Coyotes are not now and likely never going to be up against the cap, this is basically a can't-lose situation.
If they sign Gormley for four years at $2 million and he busts out, so what? If he makes it, you're now rocking a very value-laden contract. The risk reward analysis here is so much in favor of signing him to a longer term deal that the one year deal is hard to understand.
Now, Gormley was drafted five years ago, brought along slowly and to this point has only played 32 NHL games. Last year he got into 27 games - for a terrible team - and put up close to a 49% CF rating. Not terrible on a last place the team.
When you consider that the Coyotes are generally slow to break in players, that Gormley isn't the kind of physical shot blocker the team seems to be in love with and the fact that he's been blocked as they've had two elite offensive defensmen (Yandle and OEL) plus another similar in style player (Murphy) and have been breaking in two players of similar age in Stone and Murphy over the time that Gormley hasn't been getting into NHL games, it's obvious that there are a lot of reasons outside his play that have kept him out of the NHL.
Does anyone really see Tippett, whose best defensman was in his early twenties, and who was already regularly dressing two more early twenties rookies, putting in a fourth kid for regular minutes, unless he's just lights-out?
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying there aren't holes in Gormley's game or that he wouldn't have been able to play better and earn his shot faster, but the fact is that there are, at the least, extenuating circumstances.
Enough so that Maloney, with his "fish or cut bait" cliche, isn't really being fair at all to this player.
Bottom line: He has talent, and effective puck moving defenseman are at a premium and you don't give up on them early. But by issuing him an ultimatum in the form of a one-year contract, the team sabotages any trade value he might have (because optically he looks kind of like a bust) they put the onus for his development on him (when circumstances are at least partly to blame) and they sign him to a contract that ensures if he does breakout, that that they won't get good value on his contract.
Since cap space is a tangible value, this is just a bad way to run a hockey team.
When you consider that the Coyotes also made the same mistake with Boedker this summer, and you consider their hiring of old-school guys like Claude Loiselle, Darcy Reiger and the frigging John Scott signing, you have to wonder if the Coyotes are prepared for running an NHL team in this decade.
Furthermore, they seem intent on (and I'd bet any money that they will) dressing Grossman because he's a "big stay at home hitter" even though there is incontrovertible evidence that those kind of defensmen are no longer effective and he'll be blocking.......guess who? Yup, Gormley.
Because OEL, Stone, Michalak, Dhalbeck and Murphy are all but assured roster spots. You know they're going to dress Grossman, so where does that leave Gormley?
Bad moves all around here are what I'm seeing.
At least I can figure that Boedker was the one insisting on a short-term deal,what with him coming off of injury and having talent that belies his stats. But Gormley? You'd have to think he'd jump at term, if the team was willing to bet on him.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know anything about the negotiations - I'm just reporting my observations and inferences here.
Is it time for a new GM? The team's rebuilding, the farm is stocked, maybe the Coyotes need a new more progressive GM?
Thanks for reading