NHL Off-Season Thread...

[cue_meanie 0]

^ Gold.

 

EDIT: In response to Olympic.

[starvenger 0]

Or Dominik Hasek.

How about Mike Vernon?

[nl5xsk1 0]

Or Dominik Hasek.

How about Mike Vernon?

Or Arturs Irbe.

 

Osgood gets minimal glory because of his penchant for letting in goals on shots from the red line, or from the far blue line. Cloutier gets minimal glory because of his inability to win big games when it really matters. The two of them could play in old-time goalie masks (e.g. the Cheevers/Jason Voorhees style) or some new, as-yet-unseen new-school mask and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

[nl5xsk1 0]

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=91863

 

Max, what could be better news than this: Big Hal Gill has resigned with the B's! Hopefully he'll use the money to buy a backbone so he can start to play like a man. But I really doubt that. At least it's only a 1 year deal.

 

Sammy resigned, too, but I'm too lazy to go back to tsn and C&P that link, too.

[the max 0]

I'm doing backflips as we speak.

[Guest Rrrsh]

Jason Cullimore signed 4 years 9 Mill plus with Chicago.

 

 

Man, he would look good as a Canuck.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

Jason Cullimore signed 4 years 9 Mill plus with Chicago.

 

 

Man, he would look good as a Canuck.

He was a Canuck, as I vaguely recall.

[The Czech Republic 0]

To hell with these airbrushed masks. Now baseball catchers have them too! I think they should have the old-school face masks again. Cool stuff.

[Guest Rrrsh]

He was a Canuck and we unfortunatly let him go.

[MrRant 0]

The sign says "progress."

 

Turn it around and it says "dead end."

 

One voice says here are options, possibilities.

 

Another voice says this is pointless.

 

Four hours later and all we're left with after the first meetings between the National Hockey League and the NHL Players' Association in two months is another perplexing exercise in semantics.

 

Among the six separate models for averting labor Armageddon presented by the NHL Wednesday in New York, was one model that did not include a salary cap, said Bill Daly, the NHL's chief legal officer.

 

"Not all of the models recognize the necessary linkings between revenue and salary," Daly said. "I don't want to go into specifics, but obviously there are other elements" that would allow the league to meet its financial goals.

 

There are "a lot of different ways to skin this cat," Daly told reporters.

 

The league's point man on these negotiations said he was optimistic that the union had asked specific questions about the models to see "how they might play out in the real world."

 

Wrong, said NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin.

 

All of six of the proposals begin and end with a salary cap, and no matter how the league describes its proposals, league officials "remain fixated on a salary cap," Saskin told ESPN.com shortly before boarding a flight back to Toronto on Wednesday night.

 

As for asking for more details, Saskin said the more information they have, the more likely they might be to find a suitable alternative to the league's proposals.

 

For those keeping track at home, the doomsday clock on the 2004-05 season ticks down from 54 days beginning Thursday.

 

If it seems as though the two sides are discussing entirely different games, speaking entirely different languages, it's in part because they are. After all, at the heart of this battle royale is the language of change.

 

Not a question of whether things should change; they are. That is reality.

 

Two years ago, center Bobby Holik, coming off a 54-point season in New Jersey, was the subject of a frenzied bidding war that saw him land in Manhattan with a four-year, $45 million package.

 

Some weeks ago, Flyers captain Keith Primeau, coming off a dominant playoff season that saw him carry Philadelphia almost single-handedly to the Eastern Conference final, settled for a pay cut in agreeing to a four-year, $17 million package.

 

Compared with Craig Conroy's bonanza, star Keith Primeau's deal is downright modest, but that's a small drop in a big bucket.

Overall, NHL salaries rose by a modest 2.5 percent between 2002-03 and last season.

 

The landscape is changing, shifting underfoot.

 

Mike Ricci took an almost 50 percent pay cut to go to Phoenix.

 

Mark Recchi went from $5 million last year to three years at $3 million to return to Pittsburgh.

 

The market still has its blips, of course.

 

Ed Belfour's whopper deal in Toronto is one, although the one that has most general managers quietly shaking their heads is the Craig Conroy bonanza in Los Angeles.

 

No small irony that the team that made a great show of opening its books for a public inspection (a stunt hotly disputed by the players' association) would continue to drive up the crucial middle-market salary scale by rewarding an eight-goal man with a four-year, $12.6 million package.

 

"We're not doing ourselves any favors" with contracts like that, one GM told ESPN.com.

 

But those contracts appear to be the exception, no longer the rule. And so the crucial question that remains is how to translate the realities of this new marketplace to a new agreement.

 

That's where one assumes the term "negotiation" is useful.

 

The players claim they took the first big step last fall by proposing a series of changes, including a 5 percent rollback on salaries, restrictions to entry-level salaries and a proposed luxury tax they claim would have slowed the escalation of salaries the owners say is crippling the game.

 

The NHL has pooh-poohed the overture, saying the players weren't willing to follow up with firm commitments.

 

Now the NHL has brought its own plans to the table and it's up to the PA to either return serve or serve again.

 

Still, anyone who suggests there is no urgency because there are 54 fat days between now and the end of the current CBA on Sept. 15, does not understand the precarious position of this game. These two combatants have positioned themselves for a classic show of brinkmanship.

 

The NHL has a $300 million "war chest," conjuring up an image of a great pirate's trunk in Gary Bettman's office with the $10 million each team has anted up to wait out the union, spilling out over the edges.

 

Players likewise have been squirreling away money and planning seasons in Switzerland and Russia and even the World Hockey Association. (Ah, the irony of diehard unionists playing under a salary cap in a third-rate league so they can hold to the principles of never having a salary cap in the world's best league.)

 

Each side seemingly confident the other will be the first to flinch, confident the other side has more to lose.

 

But neither can be sure, can it? Just where is the line in the sand on the other side of which the game is irrevocably changed? A half season lost? A full season? Until January 2006?

 

But just how long will it take fans in Atlanta or Nashville or Florida to care enough to come back?

 

Bettman insists the future of the NHL is a 30-team future. But he can't possibly know that. There is no future in Nashville, even if there's a $30 million to $35 million salary cap, if fewer than 10,000 people bother to show up whenever the game comes back to town.

 

Likewise in Atlanta and Florida, homes to young hockey teams that seem poised to finally break into the upper ranks of NHL teams.

 

What if the cost of this stoppage is a franchise, maybe more? How are the players stronger for that? Fewer jobs and lost salary that will never, never be recouped.

 

In spite of the rhetoric and the chest thumping, these negotiations do not exist in a vacuum.

 

World Cup of Hockey training camps begin in a month, setting the stage for what should be the most important showcasing of the sport since the Salt Lake City Olympics, a showcase for a brand-new season, a brand-new landscape.

 

Season ticket sales are on the rise in Nashville and Atlanta.

 

In Tampa Bay, where the glow from the Bolts' Stanley Cup win still lights up the harbor, season tickets are expected to be up about 30 percent better than last season.

 

In Buffalo and Pittsburgh and in practically every other NHL city, ticket prices have been slashed or frozen.

 

On the human side, staff are beginning to fall in many NHL cities and, ironically, perhaps even cruelly, at the league's offices in New York and Toronto, where it was announced Tuesday that at least half would be let go when the CBA ends, their futures very much in doubt.

 

Remember when nuclear war was still a real threat and there was much discussion about the effects of nuclear winter, the half-life of radiation, how long it might be before life returned to normal?

 

What will the half-life of this labor stoppage be?

 

It says here it will be longer, the effects more brutal than either side imagines. It says here it doesn't have to be this way.

 

Scott Burnside, a freelance writer based in Atlanta, is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.

[the max 0]

http://tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=92092&hubName=main

 

Chuk will come back, provided he has a contract and there's an NHL next year.

[starvenger 0]

To hell with these airbrushed masks. Now baseball catchers have them too! I think they should have the old-school face masks again. Cool stuff.

Actually MLB doesn't let the catchers airbrush their masks - they're only allowed to have the team logos painted on, because... I dunno, it distracts the pitchers or something. Which is a shame, because back when they first were made for catchers the Blue Jays catcher at the time had a sweet one with airbrushed Blue Jays on either side.

[nl5xsk1 0]

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=92394

 

Jason Allison is stepping up his workouts, and might be able to put the post-concussion & whiplash problems behind him. If he can come back at 100%, and doesn't ask for a ton of money, I'd love to see him back in Boston. I was pissed that he was traded (although it did bring Muzz back to Boston) and think that he could help take some of the sting of losing Ralston, Knuble & potentially Murray.

 

Edit: I have to admit that this is really just a bump to keep the hockey thread from falling off the first page. It was the very last thread on page 1 when I posted this.

[the max 0]

You beat me to bumping it

 

 

Given the choice between them resigning Muzz or Allison, I'd rather them sign Muzz. He's the more consistant of the two. Allison brings a good, unselfish passing game to whichever line he's on, but Muzz scores and scores consistantly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=92378&hubName=nhl

 

Mellanby signs with Atlanta. Keenan let him slip to a division rival. Bastard.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Agreed, I'd take Muzz over Allison any day of the week. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like MOC is making any effort to get Murray signed. If given the choice of keeping Murray or losing him and get Allison back, I'll take the former. But if (when?) Murray is gone, I'd be willing to take a look at Allison (depending on his health) as someone to help fill the void that this off-season's exodus has left.

[the max 0]

Plus, Allison gives them a good second line center to put with Nylander and Sammy. Granted, Nylander and Sammy will likely be with Joe on the top line, but still, to have that second option makes me happy.

 

He'll probably take a paycut too, since he didn't play last year. Get Allison and sign/trade for another good wing, and they'll be in OK shape as far as forwards go.

 

Keeping Mrs. Gill disappoints me, as that's a million they could have used on Muzz, but, what can you do? They're alright defensively, and I don't think Razor will have a sophomore slump.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Max, what do you think they should do about the back-up role? I keep hearing that Potvin's gone and they'll trust that either Thomas or Toivonen can be counted on to be the full-time back-up. I'm not overly psyched about the idea of having an unproven net-minder backing up a second year player (even though Razor isn't a true 2nd year guy). I like the idea of them having an experienced guy backing him up to help him when he slumps or what-have-you.

 

Also, do you think they should trade either Thomas or Toivonen as part of a package and try to get some players that can help them win now?

[the max 0]

Steve Shields and Fred Brathwaite are the only two UFA's out there that are worth a damn. Shields is a reliable backup, but makes a little too much money to be just a backup goalie. Brathwaite is a good option, has backed up teams before, and would come fairly cheap (< 1 million). That's my best guess, as Thomas is a journeyman AHL'er, and Toivonen still needs to learn the game in the NHL. Pushing Toivonen too fast would make one of their top prospects turn into Dan Blackburn, with injuries and confidence issues. Bring up Toivonen slowly, that way if, god forbid, anything happens with Razor (contract, injury, etc) they have an excellent goaltender waiting in the wings, and they don't have to go shopping on the market.

 

Plus, if Razor ends up being the real deal and they lock him up long term, Toivonen is a HUGE chip to have, provided he turns out well. Having a wealth of goaltending prospects that the Bruins have (they also have Kevin Regan and Peter Hamerlik in the minors) that you don't need that other teams do can bring them a very good return as far as players go.

[Guest Olympic Slam]

Boston should bring back Potvin or sign Johan Hedberg to back up Raycroft. You don't wanna have a rookie backing him up if he were to suddenly implode and become Blaine Lacher 2k4. Nothing wrong with a little insurance.

[the max 0]

He wouldn't have a rookie, I'd like to have Fred Brathwaite, who has a lot of experience as an NHL backup.

 

Hedberg is too expensive. Potvin, I wouldn't mind, but I don't know how warm he's going to be on coming back to the Bruins.

 

Not Blaine Lacher...JIM CAREY~!

 

 

THE ULTIMATE ONE YEAR WONDER~! 1996 VEZINA TROPHY WINNER~!

[nl5xsk1 0]

I'd rather have the Jim Carey (Pet Detective) in net for the B's than Jim Carey (Net Detective). Although, I find the 'comedian' is as bad at being funny as the 'goaltender' is at making saves.

 

The B's should offer Potvin a contract and give him the chance to come back. If he looks around the league and finds a better place, all the power to him. He was very professional about being named the back-up, and I'd wish him well if he left. Having said that, though, he'd be my top choice to play in Boston as a back-up.

 

If he does leave, though, how about someone like Osgood? He'd probably want too much money for the B's, but I'd have no issues with him in net for 20 games or so this season.

 

If there's a season.

[the max 0]

I have no issue with Osgood. The only reason I suggested Freddy B was because he'll come fairly cheap, and they need the extra money to offer Gonchar.

 

Paying 2+million seems silly for a guy that's only going to play 20 or so games and giving him that money based on his name. Don't know if Osgood would want to come somewhere he won't be the #1.

[the max 0]

http://tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=92718&hubName=main

 

Dogs offer a contract to Brett Hull.

 

I have to hand it to them, they're actually trying.

 

 

http://tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=92647

 

Nucks resign Brendan Morrison.

 

Good signing, he's been a good player for the last few years for them.

 

 

http://tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=92719

 

Red Wings resign Mathieu Dandenault.

 

I was hoping they'd let him walk. Bruins could use someone like him.

[Guest Rrrsh]

Very happy we re-signed Mo and Cloots.

 

 

Next up, trading for a second lien center and/or second line winger.

 

 

I wouldnt mind signing Allison a contract if its on a Game Played basis.

[the max 0]

http://tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=92868&hubName=main

 

Ink blots are interested in signing Jason Allison. The only thing I'm wondering is...why? It's not like they need him. They need scorers more than anything right now, not assist guys.

 

 

 

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=92866&hubName=nhl

 

Alex Zhitnik wants a four year contract. Buffalo recently offered him one for 4/16mill, but he opted for free agency. I don't know who's going to be willing to offer a contract to him. He should stay in Buffalo.

 

 

 

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=92867&hubName=nhl

 

Teppo Numminen is being chased by at least two teams, the Dogs and the Stars. If the Dogs manage to land Teppo AND Brett Hull, I'd say they had a pretty good offseason. As it is, they've improved themselves defensively with Sean O'Donnell, added a good player in Boyd Devereaux, and a grinder in Ricci.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Who cares that the B's lost Knuble ... and Rolston ... and are in danger of losing Murray and maybe Thornton, too ... we've found the guy to replace them all:

 

Tom freaking Fitzgerald.

 

http://bostonbruins.com/pressbox/pressreleases.asp?ID=1313

 

Fingers are crossed that he can replicate his 7 goal season of last year. Just what the team needed, ANOTHER fucking 4th liner.

 

Damn, I hate this team so much some times.

[the max 0]

*goes on a three state killing spree*

[nl5xsk1 0]

I can only think of 2 that are necessary, Max ... Massachusetts to take care of Sinden and MOC, and NY to take care of Jacobs.

[starvenger 0]

Who cares that the B's lost Knuble ... and Rolston ... and are in danger of losing Murray and maybe Thornton, too ... we've found the guy to replace them all:

 

Tom freaking Fitzgerald.

 

http://bostonbruins.com/pressbox/pressreleases.asp?ID=1313

 

Fingers are crossed that he can replicate his 7 goal season of last year.  Just what the team needed, ANOTHER fucking 4th liner.

 

Damn, I hate this team so much some times.

Hey, you can never have enough 4th liners. Just ask the Leafs - they aren't exactly hurting for them even with Fitzgerald gone...

[the max 0]

I can only think of 2 that are necessary, Max ... Massachusetts to take care of Sinden and MOC, and NY to take care of Jacobs.

Yeah, but I need to get up to MA somehow.

 

I'll get there eventually.

 

Fucking Bruins.