Buppy

Not sure if it's already been covered, but how can they be $2.5-3M apart? What is Montreal offering and/or how much does PK think he's worth? Given the minutes he plays, points he puts up, plays in all situations, decently physical, decent shot blocker...got to think Montreal is offering at least $3.5-4M. Does he think he's worth $6-7M? Or are the Habs just really low-balling? Assuming he's not actually insane in his demands, I'd like to get him. But I'd assume Montreal would want an NHL defenseman in return, and we don't have any to spare. Doubt they'd take Lashoff.

Is Quincey hurt now too? Or is that just a nickname for him? (Given the way he's played, it's kind of appropriate )

Even if those two were replacing Franzen and Quincey, that would put us around $2M over the cap. Ok, so take out Cola. Works this year. Next year we're left with around $11M to resign/replace Flip, Brunner, Cleary, Miller, White, Kindl, Smith, a 7th defenseman (Huskins/Lashoff), and Howard. Pretty tall order. Once again, it's not that things couldn't have been done better, just whether or not it's fair to expect that they should have. Though I would also say that you can't always assume that whatever you might imagine is actually possible nor that it would necessarily improve the team in the way you think.

Trade or UFA doesn't matter. As a rule, better players make more money. Sure, we could have 23 different names on the roster but that in no way means they'd all be better names than we have now. Not to mention that throwing in every decent prospect and pick we have isn't enough to bring in more than a few significant upgrades anyway. Now, you could go around the league and cherry pick bargains, and assume we get them in good trades, and further assume they all perform just as well or better here, but that seems a bit unfair a standard. If being a good GM requires matching the best results of any hypothetical scenario you can imagine, how can anyone ever live up to that?

There's only so much room on a roster and under the cap. At most we have room for a couple big upgrades or a handful of small ones. I suppose you could consider every player around the league that we might have had a shot at to be its own separate mistake, but in the end there just isn't room to make more than a few significant changes. Climb off the cross, Harry. I'm not trying to quell anything. You want to ***** about Holland, fine. I want to express my opinion that you're overreacting. Sorry if "get over it" was too offensive of a way to phrase that sentiment. I don't want a cheerleading club any more than you want a "We suck club". I'm not upset by contrary opinions, just occasionally compelled to respond.

Yeah, I guess I forgot about that kid sitting outside the Joe with a box full of "heavies" and a sign saying, "Free to good home". I'm not saying he's infallible. I'm not even saying he hasn't made mistakes. I'm saying you can't expect him to be perfect and solve every problem. No doubt you'll say you don't expect that, but in practical terms that's what all the bashing amounts to. Like it's OK for Kenny to make mistakes, so long as they don't have any negative impact on the team. You say he's made mistakes. I say, so what, everyone does. Get over it. Again, I never said there was nothing that could have been done. Just that it isn't rational to expect someone to make all the right moves all the time. So he missed out on a few opportunities, and now the team is worse than it might otherwise have been. Do we really need to spend the better part of a year and a half whining about it every time there's a signing or trade around the league, or injury, or someone has a bad game, or someone we didn't get has a good game...

You're falling into the same trap as every other Holland critic in equating the moves Holland did make to "nothing" because they weren't good enough to suit you. But that's really beside the point. Despite General Hawk's claims to the contrary, knowing isn't actually half the battle. It's still not easy to make those transitions. If it was, you should have no trouble rattling off that list of GMs who have done it. You say you don't expect it to go off without a hitch, but it seems like that's exactly what you expect. Like you expect to make that kind of transition without any risk of missing the playoffs. That's unreasonable, and ironically you only have that expectation because of how well the team has been managed under Holland's tenure.

You're using Holland's success against him. Making successful transitions in the past doesn't mean that those transitions are so easy that we should always be successful at them. We've lost three top-4 defensemen in two years. In that time, there has been ONE top-pair defenseman to hit UFA, and only a few other UFAs or affordable trades that are any better than what we have, and I'm not sure that any of them are so much better that it would really make any difference. Let's see the list of GMs that have gone through something like that without a hitch. It's so easy there must be dozens. Just give me 5 off the top of your head... For the record, Wiz signed with Columbus before the opening of free agency. Holland didn't low-ball him. Holland never even had the opportunity to talk to him.

Even without counting last season against Hossa, he has played more games yet scored fewer goals and points than Franzen. Franzen also dealt with an injury a couple years ago. Two of the four "bad" years for Franzen came his first two years in the league, before he emerged as a top-6 forward. Hudler had nothing to do with it. We were never going to keep both Franzen and Hossa, seemed to me it was just a matter of who signed first. Also, coming off a career year and a 2nd straight big playoff year certainly didn't hurt Franzen. In your head, does Holland actually say these things? If not, how long does it take before you start to believe they're real?

You know Hudler wasn't on the 09-10 team, right? Also, over the last 3 years, Hossa's and Mule's goal scoring has been roughly equal in the regular season, and Franzen has been more productive in the playoffs.

Not "people", just me. And the question was in regard to this season. For this season I think those numbers are optimistic, though possible. When I said those numbers would be fine for a full season, it wasn't meant as a criticism. Just trying to point out that we shouldn't be judging his value by how many points he scores.

Possible, but optimistic I think. But he's not here to score. He's here to hit and cause havok. If he does that well enough, those stats would be fine even for a full season.

You're right, the new CBA won't control salary inflation (At least not once the cap starts to rise again), but it shouldn't. Salary escalation was never the problem in the first place. The problem was the revenue disparity between the clubs, and which clubs were spending the money. Player salaries rose because the cap kept rising, usually by a lot each year. That meant that almost every year there were a lot of teams with a lot of cap space, and relatively few UFAs worth spending on. It means some players end up getting over-paid, but that isn't a problem. Total player salaries are linked to revenue, so no matter what any individual contract is, the total cost paid by the owners ends up the same. There isn't any need to fix anything, in that respect. The new CBA 'works' in the sense that it allows more teams to afford player payroll. Whether it continues to work depends on how the revenue of low-revenue teams grows relative to overall leage revenues.

It seems you're confusing me saying that Jimmy could not be traded for an elite player as saying Jimmy sucks and could not be traded for anything. Again, elite player. I would consider that a pretty exclusive club. Top 5-10 players at their position. Jimmy won't get that. Maybe if he had won the Calder and the Vezina, or even had any decent playoff success, it might be worth talking about. Right now, no. If you want to consider 'elite' to mean a larger group, say top-30 at their position, then maybe yeah.

Franzen's never done that. Over the last 4 years, he's been about as consistent as a ~30g scorer ever is. An occasional multi-goal game or streak, an occasional 4-8 game drought, same as every goal scorer. He had one bad slump at the end of 10-11, which happened to follow a 5-goal game. That seems to have given some the impression that he could score 5 whenever he wants. Add to that the fact that he's not a very fast skater and not very tough equals some people thinking he's "lazy and sucks". Prime target for scapegoating.

At least 666 is out of the question. But if he goes with 63 (or 36) I'm checking his mother's grave for jackal remains.

Are you suggesting that we actually could get an elite player for Jimmy? I mean Jimmy as the main piece, not just a part of some big package. If so, you must have a pretty liberal definition of the word 'elite'.

The Omen™

It's $300K over including ~$2.86M from buying out Franzen and Samuelsson. Also, the cap next year is $64.3M, not $64M even. Subtract that $2.86, add the $1.1M, correct the cap, and that roster is roughly $1.4M under the cap. It's doable, though getting all those guys at those prices might not be. Not that it would happen. Franzen won't be bought out, highly unlikely he'd even be traded. Bert and Sammy would have to suck pretty bad to get a buyout. Emmy likely gets traded or lost to waivers, maybe this year if Eaves comes back. If we add a new defenseman, he probably replaces White rather than Cola, just because Cola is already signed. If Eaves is healthy, we likely keep him rather than re-sign Miller or Mursak. But it is technically possible to do.

BUYOUTS Johan Franzen (-$0.139m) / Mikael Samuelsson ($3.000m) ------ Teams have two amnesty buyouts, which do not count towards the cap. Those could be used on Bert and Sammy. (Since those are both 35+ contracts, buying them out without amnesty wouldn't make any sense, since it wouldn't save anything on the cap.) Teams have an unlimited number of ordinary course buyouts, which do count toward the cap. Assuming we couldn't make any trades, and Eaves came back ready to play, buying out Mule, Cola, Eaves, and Emmy would cost around $1.1M in cap next year. Saves around $2M over your roster.

In theory, I would. But you couldn't get anything elite for Jimmy.

Sorry, that's incorrect. Signing bonuses do count as salary, it just gets paid up front. Weber will make $14M each of his first few years, $13M of that is signing bonus, so it's really only $1M in salary. Technically, it's higher than anyone will be able to get next year, but when I said "highest paid" I was referring to the cap hit.

Pietrangelo is good, but I'm not sure that two seasons justify making him the highest paid defenseman in the league. To be worth that money he'd have to be a perennial Norris candidate. Plus we'd be giving up 4 first-rounders in compensation. Even if he did become a Norris candidate, it wouldn't necessarily solve all the Wings' potential problems, so any or all of those could be lottery picks. RFAs just aren't worth targetting.

'96 was worse than either

Not sure where you got those stats, but that's wrong. 32.4% in his career. Middle of the pack.