Silly Season 2009: Free Agents and Trades--Who Goes Where?

There's no such thing as going too far...

wprager wrote:

shabbs wrote:

PKC wrote:You guys are just ridiculous.

Fluff you!

Yeah, fluff off! :^^^^:

The quality of mercy isn't fluffed.
I droppeth as the gentle keystrokes from heaven upon the keyboard beneath.

Will, I'm sorry. I am deeply ashamed.

However, when the fluffing started I was 2 posts ahead of Shabbs, and now I am 23 behind. Shabbs is the real Fluff-master. I am just an apprentice in training.

Prager, you CAN make things right. Just go back and delete all your fluff.

Wait a second...that would mean... :****:

OK. Here's a new signature for you.

Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've fluffed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my fluff. And I wish you my kind of fluffiness.
- Dicky Fluff

Fixed!

Once you've fluffed... there's no taking it back... a fluff is a one-way action...

The Globe & Mail's James Mirtle digs where the G&M will not in his blog "From The Rink"...he offers this perspective on where FAs are going...or not. And why.

FREE AGENTS TWISTING IN THE WIND
James Mirtle, FromTheRink.com, July 30, 2009

A high-profile agent told Sun Media yesterday that the current environment for free agents is "all being orchestrated" by the NHL and the plan all along was to make these players sit to see if they’re willing to sign for less money.

"I think what you’ve got here is something that has been in the works for a while," said the agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bunch of guys sitting around like this looking for work. This is something teams have been looking at for a while."

— Bruce Garrioch, Sun Media

Greg Wyshynski gave Garrioch a hard time over this story in the Puck Headlines on Wednesday, but I was actually told the exact same thing — nearly word for word — by a lower profile agent last week. At the time, I chalked it up to frustration on the part of one individual, but it turns out this is something being talked about with some regularity behind the scenes.

"NHL teams know that [players will panic] and for the most part agents think NHL headquarters instructed teams to get as many players as possible to free-agent market to get players fighting against each other [for contracts]," the agent told me via email. "Some GMs have said that 'we'll wait until August because we believe we get better deals then.' None of them will say anything about Bettman instructing them since collusion charges could [come into play]."

I trust the source that said that to me, but I'm still uneasy about spreading rumours that widespread collusion is going on. It would be incredible if all 30 teams were able to agree to not stock their teams as well as possible to further some nefarious league objective.

Unbelievable, even.

Still, it's also really shocking how many quality players are available, probably 20 of whom definitely should have found a home by now. Alex Tanguay is one, but how about Sergei Zubov, Robert Lang, Manny Fernandez, Mats Sundin, Petr Sykora, Jason Williams, Taylor Pyatt, Manny Malhotra, Dennis Seidenberg, Dominic Moore, Mike Comrie, Mathieu Schneider, Miroslav Satan, Mike Grier, Mike Peca, Blair Betts, Martin Skoula, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Rob Niedermayer, etc.?

In terms of the argument that there's no cash left to spend, considering the cap is the same size as it was a year ago, that should be pretty easy to determine.

Using rough calculations from nhlnumbers.com and capgeek.com, here's what teams spent last season compared to this one and the cash left over:

TEAM	2008-09	2009-10	Diff
ANA »	$57.5	$54.3	-$3.21
ATL »	$43.6	$48.9	$5.33
BOS »	$56.8	$58.0	$1.17
BUF »	$50.6	$52.1	$1.44
CAR »	$51.1	$54.0	$2.96
CGY »	$58.9	$55.3	-$3.53
CHI »	$57.9	$59.6	$1.70
CLB »	$51.2	$47.8	-$3.45
COL »	$53.4	$50.1	-$3.30
DAL »	$57.3	$48.7	-$8.64
DET »	$57.4	$55.1	-$2.32
EDM »	$55.2	$55.7	$0.45
FLA »	$54.7	$50.2	-$4.58
LAK »	$43.9	$50.6	$6.67
MIN »	$54.4	$53.6	-$0.82
MTL »	$57.5	$55.2	-$2.32
NAS »	$45.4	$40.7	-$4.76
NJD »	$55.0	$50.1	-$4.89
NYI »	$46.7	$41.7	-$5.04
NYR »	$56.4	$53.2	-$3.21
OTT »	$54.9	$56.6	$1.68
PHI »	$66.2	$56.0	-$10.18
PHO »	$45.5	$45.0	-$0.54
PIT »	$56.7	$55.2	-$1.51
SAN »	$57.2	$57.3	$0.08
STL »	$54.3	$52.2	-$2.10
TBL »	$51.0	$49.6	-$1.35
TOR »	$50.1	$58.9	$8.78
VAN »	$53.9	$53.3	-$0.54
WAS »	$60.1	$57.4	-$2.71
AVG	$53.8	$52.5	-$1.29

Tossing out the figure from the Flyers that is heavily influenced by all the long-term injury exemptions they had, there is about $30-million "extra" left to get us back to where we were a year ago, with the tiny rise in the cap contributing another $3-million or so.

If you assume that adding an additional player to a roster would mean subtracting a league minimum salary that's being counted here, that leaves roughly $1.5-million per team to add one additional free agent. And that's before we get into signing the remaining RFAs, injuries, callups and the like that are sure to push spending above the $53.8-million average of last season by the time we get to April.

In short? There's really not much cash left at all — and that's a more likely explanation for all of the guys searching for homes than GMs banding together for the greater good. Five to 10 teams could use another piece, but they won't be spending much, and that's bad news if you're either an unsigned player or an agent, whatever the cause may be.

wprager wrote:Look, you guys are both fluffing when you reply to my fluffs. You're re-fluffers.

That's gotta be a messy job -

Enough with the fluff.

shabbs wrote:There's no such thing as going too far...

Clearly, if he blew his load with the fluffing, someone did go too far...

As everyone here seems to have made CapGeek.com the new benchmark for information re: NHL spending, a look at the list of who's still available, while not completely up to date, makes for some fun reading...

http://www.capgeek.com/contracts.php

Names that caught my attention included:

• Mats Sundin (is he done? Or would Hudler's departure mean there's room for him in, say, Detroit?)
  
• Alex Tanguay (has the touch around the net)
  
• Robert Lang (very smart scorer, good PP guy)
  
• Petr Sykora (secondary scoring)
  
• Rob Niedermayer (still a fine PK specialist)
  
• Mike Grier (tough utility forward)
  
• Dominic Moore (strong 2-way guy and faceoff man)
  
• Brendan Shanahan (we know what Shanny does)
  
• Stephane Yelle (excellent defensive forward)
  
• Mathieu Schneider (smart, tough D-man, good PP shot)
  
• Phillippe Boucher (good puck moving d-man, PP shot)
  

If you are a GM with $2MM-$4MM to spend and some gaps to address, would you add any of these guys to your team on a one year deal?

Any others from the CapGeek list, of interest?

And are most of these guys on the list out of the NHL next year?

Lots of talent still out there... I think the other question is, will they accept the offers they'll be given?

shabbs wrote:Lots of talent still out there... I think the other question is, will they accept the offers they'll be given?

Good question...IMHO James Mirtle summed up the situation in the earlier post on this thread:

In short? There's really not much cash left at all — and that's a more likely explanation for all of the guys searching for homes than GMs banding together for the greater good. Five to 10 teams could use another piece, but they won't be spending much, and that's bad news if you're either an unsigned player or an agent, whatever the cause may be.

So either you take the deal at anywhere from $1MM to maybe $2.5 for one year...like for example, Marty Biron did...or you sit...or you head to Russia/Europe.

Collusion? Puh-leeze. There have been plenty of UFA signings already. Most of the guys mentioned in the article are over the hill or soon to be. Some of them are not even coasting downhill anymore. Sundin is done -- he's not even going to the Olympics! Lang severed his achilles tendon. He will never be the same and at his age he may just be done. At the NHL level, at least. Shanahan was done last year. Grier is nowhere what he used to be 2-3 years ago. Schneider? Made of glass and getting more brittle with age.

Sure, there are still valuable pieces out there, but for what they bring, you could get a young guy cheaper. Will the young guy do the same job? No, but you need that young guy to do the job 2-3 years down the road, so he needs to get experience now.

If the cap continues, pretty soon you will see the average career of an NHL player get much shorter. You will have the superstars playing 15 years but the next tier players will find themselves being pushed out by players on 2-way contracts.

Sports Illustrated's Darren Eliot examines the shift to one year deals for free agents and what it may mean for the future.

FLOOD OF ONE YEAR DEALS IS SIGN OF NHL'S ECONOMIC TIMES
Darren Eliot, SI.com, August 10, 2009

Throughout the summer, we get reports on free agent signings as they unfold. Naturally, big names and big contracts dominate the headlines: Marian Hossa in Chicago (12 years, $62.8 million), Marian Gaborik in New York (five years, $37.5 million), Jay Bouwmeester in Calgary (five years, $33.4 million), the Sedin twins in Vancouver (five years, $30.5 million apiece), and Mike Cammalleri in Montreal (five years, $30 million).

As the offseason breezes along, though, signings become single paragraph transaction notes while teams fill roster spots with viable NHL players -- some staying with their original teams with new deals or arbitration awards, while others are on the move to where there is work. In more cases than ever, guys are signing single-season contracts -- 64 in all since the July 1 free agency start date.

Call it a sign(ing) of the times. Uncertain times, certainly, have contributed to the rash of single-season contracts. The specter of a cap number that will go down for the 2010-11 season plays a part as well. The journeyman on the move is a burgeoning component of the Three-Card Monty that is roster-building for teams as they seek to strike a balance between their committed core, their emerging youngsters and plugging dangerous holes. Without the ability to use bonuses and option years as a bridge, as was the norm in years gone by, short-term signings seem all the rage.

That was my impression in tracking the new rash of one-year deals. In talking to different capologists around the league, though, their take was less trend-related. Many of the one-year awards had to do with arbitration settlements. The exceptions were the most notorious cases thus far, involving the New York Rangers and Nik Zherdev, and the Detroit Red Wings and Jiri Hudler. The Rangers walked away from the judge's $3.9 million determination and made Zherdev a free agent. Hudler's two-year, $5.75 million award was an exercise in protocol, as he went ahead and signed with the KHL.

The guys I spoke with who craft contracts for a living also cited players being a year away from outright unrestricted free agency as another reason a one-year deal based on qualifying offers. Add in veteran deals like the one-year pacts agreed to by Brendan Shanahan in New Jersey ($1 million), Mark Recchi in Pittsburgh ($1 million), and Keith Tkachuk in St. Louis ($2.15 million) and the point is valid that it isn't just economics at play with those 64 single-season summer inkings to date.

Still, I find the volatility and mechanics behind the movement interesting. Over the course of the offseason, I've chatted with numerous players who are caught in the numbers game. Their agents keep them abreast of interest shown by various teams while trying to match contract hopes with the best possible option from a playing standpoint. For every Travis Moen who cashes in with both take home pay ($1.5 million per annum) and term (three years), there is a Scott Nichol ($750,000), Cody McCormick ($522,500), Patrick Eaves ($500,000) or Jason Williams ($1.5 million) landing a single-season deal at a bargain rate. This is the second summer in succession that Williams has signed with a team for one year. Like the others, he is mainly looking for a place to play.

Truly, the quest for cost certainty has led to more uncertainty for a host of players who are looked upon to fill specific roles, or who provide organizational depth. To that end, I've heard the term two-way contract -- where a player earns vastly different amounts whether he plays in the NHL or the AHL -- bandied about more this summer than in recent memory.

For these players and their agents, knowing the depth chart of any interested team is vital. One defenseman I talked to had several teams interested, but all were offering only a two-way contract. He had been buried on the depth chart with his current organization, so a fresh start seemed reasonable, even if it meant the possibility of going back to the AHL. When his current team came with a two-year deal, with the second season as a one-way, staying and battling seemed the prudent thing to do.

The deal might not have bucked a trend per se, but it felt a whole lot better to the player than any of the single-season look-see offers that came his way. And there were plenty of those on the table this summer. The way the economic breezes are blowing, it appears that such deals will be a fixture of summer for the forseeable future.

According to ESPN, Tanguay wants to tango in Tampa...but do the Bolts wanna dance?

FREE AGENCY: Finalists for Tanguay are ...
ESPN INSIDER, 8 August 2009

... the Wild and the Lightning.

Both teams have offers on the table for Alex Tanguay, according to the Canadian website CyberPresse.ca.

"These teams are serious. I do not deny it," Tanguay said. "At the end, I will choose the team that best suits my interests."

He said he sees himself fitting in nicely in Tampa with Vincent Lecavalier, Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis. "But it is the game of negotiations, and you never know how it will end."

However, negotiations with the Lightning have reportedly stalled because Tanguay is looking for more money than any team is willing to offer. One league executive told The Fourth Period that Tanguay's asking price, $4.25 million, is $1 million more than teams are willing to pay.

They're starting to get serious down there...

Now that Zherdev is a UFA, does that mean that Sather is interested?

I really liked what Robert Lang did last season. I'm surprised he hasn't signed a 1 year with someone looking for a good 2nd line center.

SpezDispenser wrote:I really liked what Robert Lang did last season. I'm surprised he hasn't signed a 1 year with someone looking for a good 2nd line center.

I wonder if his injury is fully healed. I remember is being pretty devastating. Wasn't it an Achilles injury?

SpezDispenser wrote:Now that Zherdev is a UFA, does that mean that Sather is interested?

Minny might want to scoop hit to play along side Havlat. They are reportedly looking for offense.