Assistant General Manager Tom Fitzgerald has left the Pittburgh Penguins in order to take the same position with Ray Shero and the New Jersey Devils. Ray Shero and Tom Fitzgerald are close with one another and this is not all that surprising of a move.
Not saying that this is related to Fitzgerald moving on but if you recall the argument on the draft floor when workers were stacking up the tables around the Penguins brass it was Tom Fitzgerald that was shouting at Jim Rutherford.
At the end of the day this turn of events shouldn't have a positive or negative impact. Pittsburgh probably leads the league in the number of assistant general managers they have employed. If you were to power rank the assistant general managers Jason Botterill would be the one at the top. He is the one that would have the biggest impact if he left. Everything else is inconsequential.
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Braden Holtby and the Washington Capitals agreed to a five year 30.5 million dollar deal yesterday. I'm usually not enamored with paying goalies a lot of money but it becomes more acceptable when you are talking about a guy that is top five at his position. Yep, Braden Holtby is strongly in that conversation and has been doing so rather quietly for years now.
Over the past five seasons played (2010-15 Holtby's entire career sample size)with a minimum of 5,000 minutes Holtby ranks fifth overall in even-strength save percentage at .930. The others on this list?
Marc-Andre Fleury ranks 28th overall at .922 during this sample size.
When you are steadily above league average without wild fluctuations you can feel more comfortable about paying a goaltender a high salary. Also beneficial for the Capitals is that Holtby is 25 years old and will only be 30 when the deal ends.
If only the Capitals could magically lose the Brooks Orpik contract and replace it with any one of the available free agents from this past season (Andrej Sekera, Cody Franson, Christian Ehrhoff) they would be even more of a force in the Eastern Conference.
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Brandon Bollig, Tanner Glass, Jared Boll, Gregory Campbell, Deryk Engelland, Shawn Thornton, Joe Vitale, Mike Brown, Steve Ott, Derek Dorsett, Brandon Prust, Chris Thorburn, Cody McCormick, and Chris Neil.
What do those players represent? They will all make more money than Alexander Semin in 2015-16.
Teams continue to pay players without talent or skill without batting an eye but taking a risk on somebody with an actual track record of success is still frowned upon by both team management and fans. Alex Semin will only make 1.1M on a one year contract with Montreal.
The character and laziness arguments still don't trump the fact that the list of players above can never and will never come close to anything Alexander Semin has done in the NHL. Why sign players who's ceiling is the basement floor? The real answer is that you don't.
"Those guys try really hard and Alexander Semin is lazy"
Great, they try hard and accomplish nothing so you end up with nothing. If somebody is lazy and can still outperform the try hards by a significant margin I'll take the better "lazy" player.
You don't sign Alexander Semin long term for 7M per season because that is not a good idea. In fact it is a terrible idea which required no hindsight to realize.
However, when the term and dollar amounts change so does the cap value. This changes the conversation about a player like Alexander Semin. For 1.1M it is an opportunity lost for a Pittsburgh team keen on rolling four scoring lines.
There is absolutely no risk for Montreal to sign him to the contract that he agreed to.
If Montreal can somehow break away from Michael Therrien as its head coach they stand a better chance to take the next step in their team's development.
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Mason Perron born on July 24th 2015 at 11:33pm! We are in love already :) best thing that happened to us! pic.twitter.com/ndEUBnNqnb
— David Perron (@DP_57) July 25, 2015
Congratulations to David and his family, great news.
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Brand new Hockey Hurts podcast discusses Lou Lamoriello hire by Toronto, Alex Semin signing, Braden Holtby contract, and the hiring of Sam Ventura by the Pittsburgh Penguins. You can find that here
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