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Pronger's contract itself is punishment enough -- in the likely event that Pronger does not play until the age of 42, Philly will still have his cap hit on the books (because his contract goes into affect after he turns 35).

Williams is looking more and more likely. From John Glennons blog at tennessean.com: I agree that if he was offered the rumored $2.5m he would have signed by now. Hopefully the offer is much lower than that... though I can't believe Detroit is the only NHL team to show any interest -- he's not *that* bad.

Lidstrom also negotiated his own last contract, without an agent. Tendinitus sucks though... I hope he has luck preventing it from getting much worse (it never really gets better).

I'll be thrilled if he reaches 50 pts as well. I'm just not sold on his offensive potential yet, and hopefully he surprises me.

Just start listing me players who have played to 42 -- you're going to run out very quick. 40 is not nearly as difficult, on the Red Wings team alone even. If 40 is pushing it, 42 is raping it.

Two extra years may not sound like a big deal, but they are when you are already 40 years-old. It is much easier to make a case that Zetterberg and Franzen will be playing at 40 in the final years of their contracts (Detroit points to Lidstrom, Chelios, Yzerman, Larionov, Hull, Thomas, Hasek, etc... ) than Hossa will be at the age of 42 (Chicago points to ????). Those two extra years Hossa has stacked ON TOP of Zetterberg's and Franzen's bring his cap hit down by almost $1m per year. All three contracts are obviously trying to circumvent the cap - but one goes a good distance beyond the other two.

There's a world of difference between Hossa's and Zetterberg's & Franzen's deals, though it's really not even about the contracts themselves - all of which were approved. It is about whether there was any collusion involved between Chicago and Hossa about retirning before it was up. It appears info has come to light since the signing.

I think Sportsnet is confused -- But that amount for two years when Hudler gets back is awesome!

Bertuzzi and Moore - book it! Malhotra must be asking for a lot... sucks.

Hossa's contract was approved by the NHL -- What we have here is a squeeler! Sweet! Someone within or close to the Chicago organization is tattling (over the retirement talk), or they would have absolutely nothing to go on and certainly would not have made this public. There's a lot of bad blood in and out of that office. Classic case of "Who Dunnit?" Tallon or one of his minions? - everyone knows Tallon wanted to sign Havlat and not Hossa. Who's the rat?

Although Wellwood put up 42 pts in 48 games in '07. Either way, it bodes well for Holland (and reafirms he should have taken Filppula to arbitration, in my mind).

Hmmmm.... I hope Holland gets that arbiter! Hudler essentially has twice the points of Wellwood - $2.4m? That would be nice

While I think Luongo is overrated, Fleury over him (or Pronger, Getzlaf, Nash, Thornton, Lecavalier, etc...) is a joke. Surprised not to see Talbot on there

Holland has stated he wants to bring in a scorer first and foremost - then a grinder so that Abdelkader can play top minutes in GR. One of Prospal/Bertuzzi/Shanahan/Williams/Sykora/Satan/Comrie + One of Malhotra/Grier/Pyatt/Betts/Neidermayer/Peca I could live with one from each group, though I obviously like some better than others. Eaves or Bell might make interesting "projects".

Tikhonov actually picked Sologubov to go along with Fetisov on his greatest All-time unit: Bobrov-Firsov-Kharlamov Fetisov-Sologubov Tretiak Guys that actually played in the NHL I would rate: Fetisov, Kasatonov, Konstantinov, Zubov, Gonchar

Valery Vasiliev was actually before Fetisov, but almost as impressive -- Played on 9 World Chamiponship and 2 Olympic Champion teams and was an 8-time Soviet All-Star.

Old NHLers never die... they just fade away to the KHL. Always liked Zubov - felt he was an extremely underrated defenseman.

I view Sykora and Williams as two pretty awful options at anything over $1m or possibly $1.5m -- with Williams as actually a more well-rounded player than Sykora. Please surprise us with Prospal, Kenny!

His Canadiens were probably the greatest hockey team ever.

If you can convince Holland to get rid of someone like Maltby, I'd be all for it. But as it is, the team already has enough role players on its bottom lines that can barely score (Draper, Maltby, Helm, Abdelkader if he is up or whatever FA grinder gets signed instead) - and I'm not as interested in adding more considering all the offense lost.

It's why I am a big fan of Holland's long-term salaries. Inflation alone has averaged over 3% growth over the past bazillion years. With a modest 4-5% revenue growth Franzen, Zetterberg and Datsyuk's cap hits will be much easier to swallow with the cap at least at $75-80m in the next 8 years. Their contracts will be the equivalent of the following in today's cap hits: Franzen: $2.86m Zetterberg: $3.55m Datsyuk: $4.41m The equivalent of a $10.82m cap hit in today's dollars -- not a bad second line, an overpayment for a third line, but not nearly as bad as it would be with today's cap hit... assuming they aren't traded before then. 4-5% growth is indeed "modest", even taking the current recession into consideration. Over the past 15 years: The NFL has averaged more than a 13% average annual growth The MLB has averaged more than 8% The NBA has averaged over 11% growth and the NHL has averaged over 10% growth Ratings on NBC and Versus, as well as local cable, have been doing nothing but going up over the past decade. The NHL is most comparable in revenues and attendance to the NBA, but the NBA makes almost 5 times as much on their TV contracts. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think the NHL will close that gap a bit in the next 8 years. The last contract with Versus was over 10% more than the previous and the current contract is up in 2010/11 -- with the chance of ESPN and NBC wanting more of a slice of the pie.

Heh... good point. There is no denying Red Wings fans love it. I just think Helm has already more than replaced Drake. And it's not Drake I am worried about replacing from the previous Cup winning team.

You just seem pretty jumpy to lump anyone who disagrees with you as a "non-fight fan". Drake didn't even fight that much -- 5 times in the regular season (which was a career-high) before he got injured and not a single fight after that. It's strange how this guy has reached sainthood around here. Nice to have, sure - but man, I'm not stressing out about replacing his 4 points and 0 fights from the playoffs in 2008. IMO, Helm has more than replaced him.

QFT Though if they are going to throw out college coaches, they might want to look into Jim Steen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Steen

Would you mind handing your account over to one of them?