toby91_ca

He was thinking it was his last chance, but can't imagine he was thinking he was at the end of his career. He was 31 years old when he signed. He was hoping he'd prove some things that year and it would translate into a 5-6 year deal somewhere else after that.

The cost of buying into UFA years is obviously high.

Disagree. If you want to compare Larkin's contract to Keller's, it's probably not far off. Larkin signed $6.1 per for 5 years, not giving up UFA years (maybe 1?). Keller signed a $7 per for 8 years, gave up 3 years of UFA. You can't discount the value of UFA years, whether you agree or not, it's huge in contract negotiations. This alone brings the numbers close if not equivalent. Also, Keller's contract was signed a year later. As already mentioned, Keller produced significantly more to date as compared to Larkin at the same age. So, considering all that, one could say Keller's deal is better from a team perspective. When I look at it in isolation I think it's a huge overpayment and I tend to think the same to all the deals, including Larkin's when they are first signed. So many of them are signed for potential vs. what they have proven. This makes some sense of course....I don't want to pay for what you've done, that doesn't help the team, I want to pay for what you are going to do. History shows that some of these signings blow up in the face of the teams that have signed them and some turn out to be good deals.

This makes no sense to me. You think the thought of Dubas deciding to accept the picks, rather than to match an offer sheet will scare teams away from making an offer to acquire a player because there is some risk that such offer would result in them getting that player and losing the draft picks? What is the desired outcome of a team making the offer then?

Saw an article on TSN today that he officially signed.

Interesting fact: Ryan N-H was drafted 8 years ago and will now be playing for his 7th coach and 5th GM (same team though).....that clearly illustrates the lack of success in that team.

Not sure how it's possible for TB to get Karlsson, even if they get out of Callahan's contract, there would need to be more moving parts. They'd have about $14M to sign Karlsson, Point, 3 more forwards and at least 1 more D.

Not missing your point at all. Age is not the major factor here. I guarantee you, GMs, coaches, etc. do not look at age to determine readiness. You need to consider experience and at what level of hockey. The better comparison is really to look at where a player has progressed since being drafted.

That's a terrible example because I doubt you'd ever see a 20 year player being drafted at 6th overall. If a player is 20 years old and hasn't been drafted yet....more often than not, they don't get drafted at all and may make their way to the NHL as a free agent (rare)......but if they do get drafted, not sure how they would all of a sudden be drafted so high. You absolutely have to base comparisons on draft year. It's very difficult to compare a player born at the beginning of the year to one born at the end of that same year. In that case you have almost a full year difference anyway, but it gets more challenging when you get towards the middle....in pure age...may not be a big difference, but hockey experience gets impacted by cut-offs. Take the biggest comparison players of the last 15 years....Crosby vs. Ovechkin. Everyone sees these guys as the same age, coming into the NHL at the same time. But Ovechkin is almost a full 2 years older. He was only drafted 1 year earlier though because of where their birth dates fell. If Ovechkin had of been playing in North America, even though he's almost a full 2 years older than Crosby, he really would have only had 1 additional year of major junior experience due to the cut-off.

I don't like Kraken either, but I think you can find several team names that have little to do with city/region....it's not just a few.....don't have to look that far.

Reality is though, teams were very close. Almost every team in the playoffs from the East was a 100pt team. The worst had 99pts and 98pts respectively. Carolina had 99pts and won just two fewer games then the Caps and Isles over the course of an 82 game season.

Why? Not sure how a 41 year old Datsyuk makes this team competitive.

Looks bad for sure, they did go for it, but I think it was more of a need to just get into the playoffs and win a round maybe. Coming into this year, in their 17 year history, they were out of the playoffs in 13 of those years and out in the first round in the other 4. They never won a playoff series in their history, they had won a total of 5 playoffs games in their existence. This season, they won a series and put up 6 total wins (6W, 4L). For that team, it has to count for something I suppose.

I don't think that was the premise. Not to speak for the person, but I'm guessing the thought process was that if hockey became very popular in the US, it might hurt Cdn teams because they earn revenues in CAD$ and if it got more and more popular in the US, overall league revenues would increase, therefore, cap and floor would increase and potentially Cdn teams would struggle to reach the floor. That's the only logical scenario I can think of, but it's still not logical. If the NHL became so popular in the US, TV revenues would increase dramatically and all teams would share in such revenues and who knows where the exchange rate will be anyway. It wasn't that long ago that the CAD$ and US$ were on par, in fact, the CAD$ was worth more. That exchange rate wasn't good for certain industries and was good for others. The overall population of the US is about 10x that of Canada, so hockey wouldn't have to become more popular in the US to reach the scenario that I think he/she was trying to get at. I'll be honest though.....as immigration continues to increase in Canada, I do wonder if hockey will continue to be as popular as it has been. I live in Toronto though, so the amount of people living hear that were born outside of the country is vastly different from much of the country, so perhaps the potential issue is not as great as it might seem.

Was just wondering what you meant by “look where Edmonton was before they got Gretzky “....they didn’t exist. Not sure the oilers are much further ahead now before and after getting McDavid either. I half agree with you though...Edmonton isn’t going anywhere, but not sure I am as optimistic on their future as you...closer to your thinking then leaning towards them being bad though

In all likelihood they hedge the FX exposure so shouldn’t be as significant of an impact as you think.

Edmonton had Gretzky from their first season in the NHL....they lost in the 1st round of the playoffs their first season, lost in the 2nd round in their 2nd season, lost in the Stanley Cup finals in their 3rd season and then won the Cup 4 of the next 5 years.

??? Do you understand the components of operating income? Essentially, revenues less operating expenses (largely payroll).....so operating income is exactly what you should be thinking about.....so yes, if CAD weakens against USD, it hurts them as their revenue is largely denominated in CAD and their payroll is largely denominated in USD....however, clearly their revenues are better than more than half the league, even considering the exchange rate......so it doesn't seem to be an issue. Exchange rate can go both ways too.

What am I missing? He's listed as 6'0", 185lbs......seems almost tiny for a Dman

Yet their operating income is in the top half of the league (close to top ten).

Anything can happen in the playoffs...getting to conference finals doesn't mean you are a better team. This is not a new line of thinking. Over the course of the season, 82 games, it's not a fluke who makes it vs. not. In the playoffs...different story, things happen, that's why teams (GMs) tend to do crazy things to try to get to the playoffs knowing if they can just get in, you never know what can happen after that. Do many think "I don't want to do anything crazy here to just get in because I know we just aren't there yet to challenge for the cup"? Absolutely, chances are 7th, 8th, etc. seeds are unlikely to go to the Finals, but it does happen regularly enough.

Umm....Mrazek had a pretty darn good regular season. If he didn't play as well as he did (there is no question he was well above league average)....they don't make the playoffs. Them finishing 7th and squeeking into the playoffs is not a knock on Mrazek, it is a positive....they don't make the playoffs without his strong play. Not sure what the future holds, but in comparison to Howard, his season was certainly better than Howards and moving forward, not sure, but odds are in Mrazek's favour.....simply due to age.

By "Bobfather", do you mean Bob McKenzie? If so, this is what he reported: May 1 - "It seems there is a whole new round of, could Pavel Datsyuk return to the NHL next season, in Detroit? Short answer is it's probably quite unlikely but since Datsyuk will actually be in Detroit tomorrow, worth mentioning" May 1 - "Datsyuk is visiting his agent Dan Milstein in DET. They will talk about Datsyuk's plans to finish his career and where that will happen. Datsyuk recently announced he's leaving SKA in KHL, but the belief is he plans on finishing up with hometown Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg." May 1 - "There's apparently been no dialogue between Milstein and the Wings on Datsyuk and certainly nothing since Steve Yzerman took over as GM. In any case, Milstein and Datsyuk will get together and figure out Pav's next step. It's probably Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg." Maybe you meant someone else's reporting? Looks like Bob McKenzie was spot on.

Yup, $2M worth of offense and $8M worth of intangibles.

Crosby’s contract was nowhere max that year, so better to give him McDavid money, not max either, but closer