Zetts

I take your point that we were injured, but disagree with the logic you're using. Yes, a loss is a loss in the stats of the regular season or in the number that will eliminate you in the playoffs. But when you're building a team, all losses shouldn't be viewed the same. Otherwise you could similarly say something like, "well, you either win the Stanley Cup or you don't." I mean, yes it's tautologically true, but it would make no sense to compare the Wings to say, the Buffalo Sabres. In any event, while I'd like to say that we'll be better next year if we're not hit so hard with injuries, I truthfully don't think it would make a huge difference. (And yes, that's a subjective opinion.) There was just something missing in the attitude or the energy of this team when we were healthy. It changed a bit when the injuries hit because of how young we got, but then of course there's the rookie mistakes too. IMO we're short a quality top 4 defenseman and a quality top 6 forward (which was the hole that Weiss was supposed to fill). Who knows though, maybe Weiss will be a 60+ player this year, the whole team will click and we'll go far in the playoffs.

It does matter when you're evaluating the quality of your team in preparation for the next season though. Barely losing an extremely hard fought series vs clearly never having a chance in a series suggest two very different things and likely different approaches for what you address in the off-season.

I do lament it. Maybe if he was here, with one fewer roster spot, Dan Cleary would be long gone. What am I talking about, it would just mean another kid stuck in GR.

Well that's not true. We signed Kevin Porter... Ugh.

Does anyone have rough comparables for those players (outside of Spezza) from within our organization? Because looking at that trade, I don't know most of the names, so it's kind of hard to gauge the deal.

What's Andreas Lilja up to these days?

If it's on a one year deal, yes. We'll certainly have the cap space, so at least from a fan's perspective, it's largely irrelevant. We're not the ones paying him.

I take it with a grain of salt, since there's no quote from Holland specific to Quincey, but this makes me ill to read: Khan tends to be a pretty good source for info too. Link

I second this. Anyone have tips?

I think that's the perception because he has already come to North America and is willing to play in a league here that's inferior to the NHL. If he really did want to play back home, I'd think he'd never have come over.

It'll be fine. Everybody was saying the same thing about Kronwall early in his career when he kept getting injured. Now it's not an issue. It's not as though he keeps having a recurring injury of the same type, like re-injuring his back multiple times or sustaining a lot of concussions. He's just been going through some bad luck.

Because Helm was never hurt when we were in the Western Conference, right?

No he doesn't... I'm not sure what boxscore you're looking at.

Link? I really, really don't want to believe this...

Is that definitely the case (re #91)? I hadn't heard that.

It's looking like this may be a real possibility. It doesn't seem like Holland has much urgency in getting our RFAs signed. He hasn't started negotiating with either Nyquist or Andersson apparently. Mlive

Yes, there are other considerations like playing style or perhaps the number of Swedes here. Perhaps Boston doesn't suit his style. But given that Murray would have matched whatever Detroit paid (as I demonstrated in my last post) and that Alfredsson had a very long history in Ottawa, I'm inclined to believe him when he says that he chose Detroit over Ottawa for a better chance to win the cup. It's not saying that we're the best team in the league. It's saying that we're better than the Senators. That's all I ever said - that Alfredsson believes we have a better chance to win than the Senators.

Is that why they offered him a contract? Alfredsson explicitly stated that he wanted to leave for a better chance at a cup. And Murray explicitly stated that it wasn't a financial thing for the Senators. From Canada.com: You can find Murray's full press conference here if you'd like to learn what happened. They certainly had the capspace. As CapGeek supports, they're currently over $13M below the cap ceiling, so that wasn't a problem. And while the Senators are on an internal cap, as you can see below Melnyk gave the green light to Alfredsson being paid whatever it took.

Realistically, my expectation (or hope, I suppose), is that he'll become a solid second pairing dman (and be worth somewhere around 4.5M/yr). So in my eyes, you maybe save 2M towards the end of the deal, while paying him about 1M too much for the first couple of years. It's not that much of a savings. But you're saddled with him for the league maximum of 8 years. What if he doesn't pan out at all? This is someone who has yet to play in an 82 game season. And it would yet again be dead roster space if he doesn't work out. I mean, it would be just like Samuelsson, Bertuzzi and Tootoo, but on our back end. For. Eight. Years. 8 year deals are for stars, not trying to save a few bucks on an unproven young player. It's a ridiculous risk for a potential net gain of a fairly small magnitude. I mean, would you be happy if we were currently "saving money" with Jiri Hudler, paying him 2.5M/yr for 8 years when he's really a 4M/yr player (or so his contract would tell us). There are other considerations than saving a bit on the cap.

From what I've seen, I'm one of the bigger Smith supporters here. And at that, if Smith was signed to that deal I would probably throw my laptop out the fourth-storey window currently in front of me.

Yeah, I was just going to say... He's 27 and has played 10 games in the NHL in his entire career. I mean, I guess it's a minor point since you've got to expect Rask will be playing the vast majority of the games with his massive new contract. But it's one example (and I think there will be a few more before the end of the offseason) of how Boston has to struggle to make it in under the cap.

There are only two teams in that list better than us: Pittsburgh and Boston. I mean, Alfredsson left Ottawa after like 17 years to come here because he thought we had a better chance at the cup. Yet you still have them rated ahead of us. Confusing.

That talent is absolutely ridiculous. Rumors have been that they're shopping Marchand to trim capspace though, so he could be gone.

The longer Brunner remains unsigned, the less people around here can blame Holland. It seems like he's asking for a pretty decent chunk of money. I'm pretty comfortable that Holland made the right move with his signings. His past signings (i.e. Sammy) might not have worked out, but given that past years' mistakes can't be undone, Holland has executed flawlessly this offseason IMO.

That's the thing, I don't think that there is a forward in that group that deserves the max. 8 years for somone so frequently injured at such a large cap hit is crazy. Agreed, but they're also already over the cap by about 1.4M and Bergeron's new, higher contract doesn't even kick in until 2014-2015. That's with 13 forwards, 7 defensement and Chad Johnson (who?) as their backup, being paid $600 000.