BillsSabresB.C.T. Fan
10-11-2009, 11:22 AM
GMs these days are all about dollars and sense with a four-step thought process that generally goes in this order: annual salary, length of contract, years remaining before unrestricted free agency, hockey ability. If the first three don’t add up, the fourth doesn’t make a bit of difference.
“It isn’t about just hockey,” Sabres GM Darcy Regier said. “It’s about years on the contract, dollars in the contract and a lot of things that weren’t there before. You can say, ‘I love that player,’ but that’s not the first place you look. The first place is, ‘What’s his contract?’ ”
Regier suggested that every team, including his own, has over-signed players. Too many are making bigger bucks than their worth given the salary cap. It has created a widening gap between the salaries of NHL elite players and plumbers (see: Kaleta, Patrick) who are no less important on a given night.
The result has been a logjam across the NHL that inhibits player movement. Almost every team has the same objective but also the same problems. Nobody wants overpaid players. In order to ship them out, it takes a trading partner who is willing to accept an underachiever based on money versus production.
And if a productive player has a sensible salary, why trade him? With 20 teams within $3 million of the $56.7 million salary cap, there’s little wiggle room to swap players unless their contracts are also similar. Essentially, early-season trades these days require two teams willing to trade stars for stars or trash for trash.
“In most cases, you can only get another player who is in a similar position on another team,” Regier said. “That’s why it doesn’t happen.”
The options? Teams can waive a player and hope another teams grabs him, thereby losing a player for nothing or risk paying him NHL money while he plays in the AHL. They can trade one underachieving player for another, which makes little sense. They can stick with their current roster and hope.
http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/story/824447.html
“It isn’t about just hockey,” Sabres GM Darcy Regier said. “It’s about years on the contract, dollars in the contract and a lot of things that weren’t there before. You can say, ‘I love that player,’ but that’s not the first place you look. The first place is, ‘What’s his contract?’ ”
Regier suggested that every team, including his own, has over-signed players. Too many are making bigger bucks than their worth given the salary cap. It has created a widening gap between the salaries of NHL elite players and plumbers (see: Kaleta, Patrick) who are no less important on a given night.
The result has been a logjam across the NHL that inhibits player movement. Almost every team has the same objective but also the same problems. Nobody wants overpaid players. In order to ship them out, it takes a trading partner who is willing to accept an underachiever based on money versus production.
And if a productive player has a sensible salary, why trade him? With 20 teams within $3 million of the $56.7 million salary cap, there’s little wiggle room to swap players unless their contracts are also similar. Essentially, early-season trades these days require two teams willing to trade stars for stars or trash for trash.
“In most cases, you can only get another player who is in a similar position on another team,” Regier said. “That’s why it doesn’t happen.”
The options? Teams can waive a player and hope another teams grabs him, thereby losing a player for nothing or risk paying him NHL money while he plays in the AHL. They can trade one underachieving player for another, which makes little sense. They can stick with their current roster and hope.
http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/story/824447.html