sibiriak

Andrei Markov becomes a UFA after this season. I think that Schneider's money would be more than enough to sign him. He is the best defenseman in Montreal, not Souray.

So I couldn't bother the booing idiots sitting next to me, but they are allowed to bother me by their booing? C'mon. if someone boos, you can counter-boo or applaud, or ask them why are they booing. There's nothing wrong with it.

What salary? Fedorov is a UFA after the next year, and if traded on the deadline, his cap hit would be about $1M at most. EDIT- got beat to the punch. Good job.

I believe he will. But a $6.75M contract for 4 years is much better for the player than a $6.7M contract for 7 years, because salaries go up every year by 7-10%. At that rate, Luongo will get at least $8.5M per year after his current contract expires. Which means that by signing for 7 years Datsyuk gave up potential raises in years 5,6, and 7 compared to Luongo. So his average over the next 7 years is much lower than Luongo's. You can not compare contracts of different lengths without adjusting for that. To earn the same amount as Luongo over the next 7 years, Datsyuk would have to earn over $7.5M per year. Someone who makes $4.34M today will, if his salary grows at the same rate as the league average, earn $6.7M in 7 years. Why don't you compare Datsyuk to players like Hejduk, Modano, Hemsky, Demitra, Kariya, Arnott, Marleau, Glen Murray, Gionta, Holik, Satan, Cole, Alfredsson, Kovalev, all of whom are making around $4-$4.5M on average. Is Datsyuk comparable with those players in his contribution? Certainly. Of all those players only Alfredsson is even close to Datsyuk's point production this season.

Reality check. Datsyuk was going to get much more than $5 mil. on the UFA market. Any deal not offering close to $6 mil. was a non-starter. So Holland compromized. He agreed to overpay for the first few years of the contract, and in exchange got Datsyuk for what will be below market price for the remainder of the 7 years. The cap went up by by 10% per year so far (which means that the average salary rose at that rate too). A $6 mil. contract today will (at 10% rate of increase) become something like $ 10.63 mil. in 7 years. In fact, if Datsyuk agreed to 7 consecutive one-year contracts, starting at only $4.943 mil. with a 10% increase every year, he would have earned $46.9 mil. over those 7 years. Which is exactly the same as he will earn under this contract. EDIT-math.

Datsyuk is signed for 7 years vs Luongo's 4. Luongo gets $6 mil. $6.5 mil. $7 mil. and $7.5 mil. for those 4 years. Assuming the same progression, Luongo would make $8 mil. $8.5 mil. and $9mil. for the hypothetic years 5, 6, and 7 if he signed a 7 year contract. That averages to $52.5 mil. over 7 years or $7.5 mil. per year. And that contract started last year, if it was signed today, it would have been $0.5 mil. per year higher or $8 mil. per year. So please do not compare contracts of different lengths at face value. I do agree that the Wings might need a goalie in the next 7 years, IF Howard doesn't work out. But if he does, then Osgood is more than capable of holding the fort for a year or two. And guys like Backstrom from MIN or Mason or Thibault or Niitymaki may become available as relatively cheap FAs in the foreseeable future.

That is probably because at nhlnumbers.com you are only looking at the remaining years of a contract,not allof them. If the contract is backloaded, the cap hit would be less than the average of the remaining years. Or, in Jagr's case, only half of his salary counts because Washington is paying the other half.

From the cap standpoint, it doesn't matter because the average salary over the whole contract counts as a cap hit. And if Kronwall is injured, his salary doesn't count against the cap, as londg as he is on the LTI list.

That's an interesting question. Fedorov's and Sakic's long contracts weren't failures, Yasin's and Jagr's (at least from Washington's point of view) were. Does anyone have other examples of 5+ yr contracts,and how they turned out?

Mike Babcock: "If you say that any North American player wants to in in the playoffs more than Pavel Datsyuk, you are flat-out crazy".

And now Mike Bacock is on1270, praising Datsyuk to heavens for his passion, skill, work ethic, defense, and willingness to go to "hard areas".

As Holland said today, under the CBA, the contract terms cannot be extended/renegotiated until the last year of the contract. That means that the earliest that Datsyuk could ask for more money is 2013. And again, your are projecting your self-admitted greed on Datsyuk, contrary to the evidence from the people who know him.

Yes, and so do Holland and Yzerman, and they know Pavel way better than you. As to the pressure, Datsyuk didn't score much in the first part of the season, and people here were blasting him then. He performed well since, so now he is a greedy bastard playing for a contract. He can't win whatever he does. Again, I will go with Yzerman's opinion over yours.

Toquote Yzerman (again): "Pavel is not motivated by money, he wants to do well and prove his critics wrong." The fact that you are motivated by money (as you just said), explains why you think that everyone else is greedy, but doesn't make it so.

Not a single reporter even asked about the $$ amount. Why?

Respectfully, I take Steve' Yzerman's opinion over yours.

If the contract is indeed for 7 years, then it must be for 6.3 milon average at least.

Eva, you know better than lumping RFAs and capped rookies together with UFAs. And a 5-year contract is supposed to pay higher per year than the 1 year one.

We suck in OT as well (3W 8L) and there certainly are those in the playoffs.

Friday: Atlanta @ Carolina Florida @ Tampa Bay Anaheim @ Dallas Saturday: NY Islanders @ Philadelphia Buffalo @ Washington Chicago @ Detroit Phoenix @ Los Angeles Vancouver @ San Jose Ottawa @ Boston Montreal @ Toronto Florida @ Carolina Tampa Bay @ Atlanta Anaheim @ Columbus NY Rangers @ Pittsburgh St Louis @ Minnesota Nashville @ Colorado Edmonton @ Calgary Sunday: Chicago @ Dallas Buffalo @ Philadelphia NY Islanders @ New Jersey Vancouver @ Phoenix Calgary @ Colorado Aussie_Wing, thanks for doing all this work. It's been a lot of fun. I second the suggestion to do the playoff edition of the Weekend picks, and I volonteer to help with the book-keeping. PM me if there's anything I can lend your a hand with. You are too far ahead of me to catch but I'm gonna fight for the silver!

I love how Habibulin checked to see if he had another 5-hole, after Datsyuk scored through there.

And without Jagr, those chances must be negative.

If SJ is lacking anything it is not goaltending. They have two elite goalies in Nabokov and Toskala.

Just saw the replays. Ovechkin didn't do anything other than raising his stick and touching gloves with his teammates on the bench, after he scored his 2 goals tonight.

C'mon, the man is eating crow already. Don't insist that he also cooks it to your recipe. RussianSwede, it takes a big man to admit he was wrong. Respect!