The Everything NHL Thread

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Leafs had a neutral Free Agency in my eyes. Calling the two deals ridiculous is a stretch to understate it, Clarkson is a tiny overpayment on his value as a solid second liner for a player that will remain productive to his contract for likely the first 5 of 7 years of it. Clarkson is furthermore a perfect complement to our current second line of Kadri/Lupul if they form any sort of chemistry. Bozak was overpaid for his worth but in a situation where we really needed to retain him after dropping Grabovski 4.2/year is quite reasonable. Its also possible Kessel had something to do with him staying and will take a comparative discount (about 1 million if you believe Bozak was overpaid by that much, ergo 6 mil instead of 7 mil resign) when he resigns next year.

Other things such as Grabovski's buy out and the Bernier trade average out to pretty much even money in my eyes as well.

I'll dig up articles to support this if fsr someone really hates my opinion lol

 

[Mercy]

$36.75 million over 7 years is 1st line money. The fact that he's 29 makes it even worse.

 

[Chill Murray]

This isn't NHL related but you guys might still get a kick out of it: Last year I participated in a pond hockey-style game to play for the (goddamned) Schaefer Cup. That is this trophy:

It turns out that someone set up a GoPro camera at one end of the rink we played on, and they put up a compilation of clips from the game on YouTube. Everyone's favorite Islanders fan is the guy in the 91 All Star Game Gretzky sweater.

 

[New World Order]

Yes! The Oilers got another small, soft, injury prone winger! Now all we need to do is trade for Jeff Skinner or something. Run an entire lineup of them. :) Seriously, I really hope the Oilers only traded for Perron because of value and plan to get someone with actual size soon...

 

[Vineon]

I actually can't wait to see what kind of numbers Perron can pull for the Oilers. I assume more than what he did with the Blues.

And come on, he's 6'0" 205 lbs according to NHL.com. I wouldn't say that's small.

 

[New World Order]

Yeah, so if the Devils weren't the biggest losers of the offseason before, they definitely are now. Losing Kovalchuk/Clarkson for Ryder/Clowe, the latter whom is signed to a Ville Leino-esque contract, as well as having to forfeit what's almost surely going to be a top 5 pick. The Devils look to be headed towards an even darker period than the 2009-2012 Oilers.

 

[New World Order]

Yeah, so if the Devils weren't the biggest losers of the offseason before, they definitely are now. Losing Kovalchuk/Clarkson for Ryder/Clowe, the latter whom is signed to a Ville Leino-esque contract, as well as having to forfeit what's almost surely going to be a top 5 pick. The Devils look to be headed towards an even darker period than the 2009-2012 Oilers.

 

[OrbitingDeath]

What a shitty move by Kovy :(

 

[Mercy]

Yeah, so if the Devils weren't the biggest losers of the offseason before, they definitely are now. Losing Kovalchuk/Clarkson for Ryder/Clowe, the latter whom is signed to a Ville Leino-esque contract, as well as having to forfeit what's almost surely going to be a top 5 pick. The Devils look to be headed towards an even darker period than the 2009-2012 Oilers.

I dont know about that. The Devils have one of the best GMs in the business in Lou Lamoriello compared to the idiots the Oilers have had. The Devils are the most successful franchise after Detroit in the last 20+ years. They can recover from this.

But yeah what a dick move by Kovalchuk. He was on track for a Hall of Fame career. Have fun in the KHL.

 

[Mercy]

Delete

 

[CaptainKishimoto]

I still love Kovy, but this really sucks. Such a fun player to watch, and he was actually turning into a good 2-way player.

 

[New World Order]

Apparently he's going to earn 100 million over the next 5 years. I guess Kovalchuk just doesn't give a fuck about winning a Stanley Cup.

 

[OrbitingDeath]

Yes! The Oilers got another small, soft, injury prone winger! Now all we need to do is trade for Jeff Skinner or something. Run an entire lineup of them. :) Seriously, I really hope the Oilers only traded for Perron because of value and plan to get someone with actual size soon...

They drafted Nurse for a reason, keep the small guys healthy ;)

 

[Justin8649]

I'm not a huge Kovalchuk fan, but I do feel the need to defend his actions. I already posted this on another forum, so I'll just leave it here too:

I don't understand why Kovalchuk is getting such a bad rap for doing this. If Dustin Brown suddenly retired to be with his family today, nobody would care because he is a hard working north american hockey player that always talks to the media. Lamoriello told the media that he has been aware of Kovalchuk's desires for well over a year. Why would anybody be surprised that somebody might want to live in their homeland? Especially after they've already made enough money to live comfortably and happily for the rest of their lives. Jeremy Roenick can bash random people on twitter all day long, but that won't change the fact that Kovalchuk is not an asshole and has done absolutely nothing wrong. It isn't like he reported to the Devils ridiculously fat and out of shape so he could work on TV all season long and collect a fat paycheck to play like shit...right Roenick? Right? Now there's a real asshole for you.

I'm pretty sure Kovalchuk carried the Devils into the playoffs 2 seasons ago. On his back. His broken back. Parise was awful in the playoffs that year as well as this year. Yeah it sucks that they had a lot of money tied up into Kovalchuk, but they would've been super awful these past few years without him, just like they will be now. Whenever Parise starts carrying a team like Kovalchuk did, then we can talk about the Devils making a huge mistake. Until that happens, the Devils are no better or worse than they would have been if they never signed Kovalchuk. They actually almost won the Cup thanks to him, instead of being bottom feeders without him.

 

[Aldaron]

^ I agree 100%. I've been trying to say something similar to my New jersey fbook friends but they refuse to listen.

Sports players in general are put on some sort of pedestal when it comes to "honoring" contracts...which I don't understand at all. Forget the Dustin Brown analogy, if any of us gave a 2 weeks notice to our companies to take better pay elsewhere, none of us would get any shit for it. It's only the in sports world that employees aren't allowed to leave their contracts for other teams (OK, sure, "fair play" might justify this) in the same league, and only in the sports world that a player chosing to join another damn league altogether gets shit for it.

The counter to that point is due to the CBA (which isn't Kovalchuck's fault and I don't think players should be required to shoulder blame for something the league powered into) the Devils take a hate and Kovalchuck is being a bad team player...except that by doing this this early he is only hurting the Devils to the tune of 250k a year...which is literally nothing.

The "honoring the contract" part of it also is hilarious to me...because technically speaking, the league isn't honoring the contract it let Kovy sign before the new cba. I would love to see how many people hating on Kovalchuck would happily stay in their current jobs if the company restructured their contracts to make a signficantly less amount of money than initially agreed upon. When companies redo your contract to the negative, most of the time, you give your two weeks and leave.

Not sure why Kovy is getting this kind of crap.

Also lol at the Roenick reference...totally true, and 100% appropriate. That guy is getting close to Millbury / Cherry level hilarity / hypocrisy

 

[Justin8649]

Metropolitan division. Seriously?

 

[Synre]

At least 3 from each division + 2 extras for Playoffs probably means the system will actually work.

The new division name seems like it belongs on a Monopoly property though

 

[Vineon]

How's that going to work:
Coors Light NHL Stadium Series
* Anaheim Ducks vs. Los Angeles Kings - Dodger Stadium
Saturday, Jan. 25, 9:30 p.m. ET -- NBC Sports Network, CBC

Surprised it is even possible.

 

[Mercy]

Jagr signs with the Devils.

Jagr’s got it pretty good. He just signs with the highest bidding team thats on the playoff bubble. Then at the trade deadline if his team doesn’t make it, he gets traded to a contender for a Cup run. Has his cake and eats it too.

 

[Mercy]

Also Sam Gagner gets 3 years at 14.4M. LOL.

 

[DM]

Yes, he is a rising player and has been improving steadily, but that's kinda silly. I feel like that 8-point game is still weighing heavily in his favor.

 

[New World Order]

Have you seen some of the stupid contracts handed out? Some players who got longer term, higher caphit contracts include the likes of Clarkson, Weiss, Filpulla, and the worst of them all, Clowe. Would anyone who can think rationally seriously take any of those players over a 24 year old Gagner? He's been a consistent 40-50 point center for his entire career and looked to be finally coming into his own this past season. He'd be a second line center on any team other than teams like Pittsburgh/Boston/SJS that have two legit first line centers, and would probably be a first liner on teams like Buffalo/Florida/Nashville. Gagner was going into arbitration, which would've made him a UFA in a year, so he was effectively negotiating as an impending UFA. Had Gagner hit UFA, he would've bagged 5.5 million on a long term contract easily. 4.8 million is certainly no bargain, but it's a tradable contract, especially considering it's only 3 years. It's a lot less of a joke than paying that much over a longer period to a one hit wonder Clarkson or an over the hill Clowe.

 

[Mercy]

Have you seen some of the stupid contracts handed out? Some players who got longer term, higher caphit contracts include the likes of Clarkson, Weiss, Filpulla, and the worst of them all, Clowe. Would anyone who can think rationally seriously take any of those players over a 24 year old Gagner? He's been a consistent 40-50 point center for his entire career and looked to be finally coming into his own this past season. He'd be a second line center on any team other than teams like Pittsburgh/Boston/SJS that have two legit first line centers, and would probably be a first liner on teams like Buffalo/Florida/Nashville. Gagner was going into arbitration, which would've made him a UFA in a year, so he was effectively negotiating as an impending UFA. Had Gagner hit UFA, he would've bagged 5.5 million on a long term contract easily. 4.8 million is certainly no bargain, but it's a tradable contract, especially considering it's only 3 years. It's a lot less of a joke than paying that much over a longer period to a one hit wonder Clarkson or an over the hill Clowe.

I would not pay Gagner 5.5M on a long term contract. He's already played 6 seasons and hasnt shown any improvement. Only been a 40-50 points guy. Its not like he bring other stuff to the table besides points. I would like to see Gagner's contract compared to players his age not UFAs.

 

[Justin8649]

He was on a 65pt pace last season. How is that not improvement? He has also turned into a not-terrible-defensive-forward, which is better than his previous rating of terrible-defensive-forward. He is still 24 years old and his contract will be paying him for 2 of his UFA years. I would put Gagner on a tier below Seguin/Skinner/Duchene/Eberle that are in the 5.5-6 range.

How is a 4.8mil a year for a young and improving center a bad deal? Especially if they put up 55-65pts on the 2nd line?

 

[Aldaron]

God fuck this log out shit. Lost my nicely structured post explaining the cap and cap hit averages -_-

I'll just do a quick summary now, I'm sure you can fill in the gaps.

my source: http://www.capgeek.com/payrolls/

Basically, 63.4 mil cap for 2013-2014, 550,000 min salary, betwen 20-25 players on each roster. Let's go with an average of 23 players, with 18 starting skaters, 2 goalies, 3 reserves. I did the math for the top 8 salary cap teams and the average for their goaltending duos was 5.55 mil, so figure the 3 reserves make league min and you have 5.55 + 3 * 550,000 = 7.2 mil for 5 players, meaning 56.2 left for 18 starting skaters, meaning around 3.1 mil average per.

Figure your 3rd line / 3rd d pairing make 1 mil less than average, and 4th line makes 2 mil less. That's 2 mil * 5 + 1 mil * 3 = 13 mil for 8 players, meaning we're left with 43.2 mil for 10 skaters.

That alone is around 4.32 mil on average for first/ second lines and d pairings...Which alone should tell you that salaries between like 3-6 for second line players aren't that big a deal.

Gagner improved his pace this past year, is a center, and has developing offensive tools to work with in Edmonton. 4.8 mil a year really is nothing to bat an eye at...it's perfectly within the acceptable range.

 

[Mercy]

He's barely improved. After 5 years he plays at a 65pt pace last season in a 48 game season.? Wow. He still isnt good defensively and is still awful at faceoffs, which is probably the most concerning thing for me. A guy like Kyle Turris is only making 3.5M for the next 5 years, thats a bargain when compared to Gagner. He's not even part of the new core, Hall, RNH, Yakupov, Schultz, Eberle are all better and more valuable to the team. Nurse as well.

As for Kovalchuk, he's free to do whatever he wants. From what Ive read he was thinking of retiring ever since he got back from Russia after the lockout. Why didnt he announce his retirement after the regular season ended and give the Devils a chance to sign someone in free agency? He did it after the draft and free agency.

Its a shame because he was one of my favorite players and easily on track for a Hall of Fame career. So much for that.