Carman

Read a pretty good article that tries to give reasons for the success of the Red Wings especially in the cap era.

http://lastwordonspo...iance-revealed/

I agree with most of what the article said, it pretty much states that the strategy Holland is using IE. (Keeping *ready* players in the AHL longer) to make sure that when they get done with their rookie deal they don't have a huge contract negotiation to wade through(Like P.K. Subban, Ryan O'reilly, and what will be Edmonton's problem the next few years), rather they have just 50 or so games to go off of and we get them to sign a cheaper long term deal. He relies on the older players to eat up important minutes and remain competitive while not playing a Brendan Smith and giving Smith's agent ammo for his next deal so that we can get the same player for cheaper. A good example was Hudler, we got a lot of him for cheap, then he chased the big pay check that Holland wasn't comfortable to pay.

Interesting theory nonetheless.