BostonBruinsDan1924

Nobody has addressed the issue of front loaded contracts for 10+ years. I think our owners, the O6, should chime in and tell Bettman to shut the hell up since the O6 is the back bone of the NHL. If the NHLPA can pit the small market teams owners against the big market teams owners and watch them bicker among themselves that would be comical to see.

As for owners saying "we don't have enough money"...I don't want to see them crying becasue they can't get to the cap floor let alone sign high quality players. If you have the money to land an elite player then go for it...if you DON'T have the money to land an elite player stop your bitching and move on.

Interesting that Bettman's salary has risen from less than $3M before 2004-05 lockout to approx $8M today.

This is more a testament to how many mistakes the NHL made in expansion and how the owners are responsible for what they call the players making "too much money!" Up until a few weeks ago, the owners were still handing out $100 million dollar contracts. It the owners that are screwing each other, not the NHLPA. It reminds me of the savings and loan crisis in the U.S.....and this NHL situation would be akin to the savings and loans after collapsing or nearly collapsing, blaming the people they loaned the money to for the crisis they found themselves in. The eptitome of passing the buck for some serious mismanagement.

Maybe the U.S. and Canadian goverments can come to NHL owners aide too since they are in such finacial trouble. (Eye roll)

Bettman playing dirty.
http://m.nypost.com/...iVeijZpbgII0lnN

Whether we support the NHL or NHLPA, the only fact I know is that the Owners/Gm's are the one's responsible for signing players to BIG, LONG TERM contracts. Players/agents can push the limits but the one who signs the paychecks makes the final decision.

Once again arrogance being the key word in this issue! The owners think that since the league recovered so well after the last work stoppage, they can turn around and do it again. I seriously doubt they will, and being a passionate hockey person, hope they never recover if they try this nonsense again.

Breaking: Columbus and Nashville to merge into one single team to make up for losses.

The CBJ's get a grinder a floater and AHLer and a pick that will be in the end of the draft.

Anisomov has more playoff goals than Nash.

I can hear it now...

Breaking News - Pittsburgh Penguins C Sidney Crosby sidelined  4 - 6 months due to a bruised labia caused by hit from Philadelphia D Shea Weber. Suspension imminent.

LOL! How about we smash Matt Cookes face into the boards.

If Weber does go to the Flyers, does this mean we'll see him smash Crosby's face into the boards?

• Using the signing bonus mechanism to pay Weber $14MM in season one and another $13MM on 7/1/2013 has, literally, the effect of paying him $27MM in season one.
• You could argue that paying Weber $27MM between late July 2012 and July 1 2013 violates the spirit and intent of the rule that caps compensation at 20% of the Upper Limit, which, I might add, the contract exceeds by almost 200%.

This right here caught my attention. If I understand this correctly, this might be a sticking point, then again I could be wrong. They say $14.05M and if I read the numbers correctly, the contract is $14M even. Either way you dice it I don't see how Nashville can front load a deal like the Flyers have done. They really did their homework on this and stuck it to the ownership. I just can't see Nashvilles ownership mortgaging the team or their future just to match and retain Weber. I will say this...small market teams get F'd hard core compaired to us Original 6 franchises or any of the other top money making franchise.

Wow, yeah!  That's just blowing my mind even further.  I don't understand how these "signing" bonuses spread out over many years have anything to do with signing in the first place, or how they are anything other than a circumvention of the Cap.

Also, I seem to recall that Suter and Parise's contracts had similar provisions that essentially paid $20+ million for one year of hockey (with the second bonus coming due in July 2013).  The "100% rule" issue is a separate deal, but if this deal violates the "20% Upper Limit" rule, don't the Parise and Suter deals too?

Here's another question...suppose the league/arbitrator/whomever invalidates the Weber offer sheet on one of the grounds mentioned above.  Does Weber then go back to RFA status where he could field other offer sheets, or does he head straight to salary arbitration with NAS then?  I would think the former...

Weber played the arbitration card last year and was awarded the $7.5M vs Nashville offering $4.75M. I don't think he can play that card again. I could be wrong.

Save your cap geek garbage for somebody else.  Your wrong on every level here.  Poile will match and he will be a pred for a very long time.  Deal with it

Cybulski & Co@Cybulskishow
Here is our interview with Shea Weber's agent Jarrett Bousquet - http://bit.ly/MocI6a

Did you not listen to Weber's agent and what he said? "everything changed July 4th" meaing when Suter left Weber knew it was time to move on and he said he weasn't going to go through another "rebuilding" phase. Translastion he wanted out.

As for the Capgeek link the number don't lie, granted it's all a numbers game, but at the end of the day Nashville will have a very hard time matching or trying to match the offer sheet. Your team isn't turning a profite on it's investment aka your franchise is losing money every year. Remember Jim Balsillie want to buy the Preds and move them to Hamilton, OT? If Weber signs with the Flyers all's you have is Rinne with a 7yr/$49M contract. You guys have lost Suter, Radulov, Tootoo, Kostitsyn and Bouillion and you haven't bothered to replace any of those players.

Polie keeps saying the Preds will match it and retain him...if that was the case Nashville would have already inked Weber to a deal. Since that hasn't happened now Nashville is in a huge bind and are looking to see IF they can pull off a match. At the end of the day Nashville has screwed this up and he signs with the Flyers.

These are the facts of the issue and this is the reality of it all.

by George Malik on 08/18/11 at 06:10 AM ET



Updated at 6:26 AM: As the Free Press's Helene St. James continues penning what is now an epic ten-player slate of pre-season assessments regarding Red Wings players (we talked about the first, um, nine [wow] on Wednesday), we've had our share of disagreements as to certain players' roles and futures with the team, but today…We come to a prospect whose role with the team in both the immediate and relatively distant (by Wings fans' standards) future invokes debate as a matter of course.

Especially given the progress he's made over the past four years as a Red Wings prospect at three seasons' worth of NCAA and one season's worth of AHL levels of hockey, it's not an overstatement to suggest that Brendan Smith is indeed Detroit's top prospect in terms of natural talent and "upside," and at 6'2" and a very liberally-listed 190 pounds (he was at or around a still lanky 180 at the summer development camp), with some filling out to do, he may not be the team's next Nicklas Lidstrom, but at least my viewings of him lead me to suggest with a high level of certainty that he's going to be the team's next Niklas Kronwall.

Smith could very well post 40-50 points at the NHL level while displaying a Kronwall-like level of physical play, and after an injury-shortened rookie season in the AHL still produced 32 points over the course of 62 games while Smith plied his trade for the Grand Rapids Griffins, the Wings have talked Smith up as being NHL-ready right now, and despite the fact that the team's signings of Ian White and Mike Commodore and Jakub Kindl's value as a non-waiver-exempt prospect, the Wings are still suggesting that Smith will be given every opportunity to make the team during training camp And St. James believes that Smith could very well be best-served by making the team:

Management considers Smith to be knocking at the door, and will give him plenty of looks during the exhibition season. The Wings have, essentially, 14 forwards slated for Detroit (Cory Emmerton can't be sent down without being exposed on waivers) and, including Smith, eight defensemen, which along with two goaltenders adds up to one over the 23-man roster limit. It's rare that at least one player doesn't suffer an injury during camp, however, so that situation may resolve itself.

If not, Smith may be sent down because he'd be the easiest one to ship out, but he won't spend the entire season in the minors. He made way too favorable of an impression on management last season.  Smith, a 2010 finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, is a future top-four defenseman in the mold of Niklas Kronwall: He can skate, handle the puck, run the power play and has a physical edge. Smith isn't imposing—he's 6-foot-1, 170 pounds—but like Kronwall, and like Chris Chelios, Smith has a knack for knowing when to run guys.

The Wings want Smith to learn from watching Nicklas Lidstrom. Like many young players, Smith's enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of him. He needs to figure out when to pick his spots and when to play it safe.  If he has a great camp, Smith could emerge from the exhibition season too high on the depth chart to be sent to the minors. He's got more skill than Jakub Kindl and Mike Commodore. The Wings could opt to send down Commodore; he cleared waivers in January when Columbus exposed him. While his salary now is a lot less, he's not irreplaceable should another team grab him.

The fact that Smith seems ready for the NHL is a great problem for the Wings to have. Smith will have to compete to be on the squad, but he also should raise the competitiveness of Kindl, Commodore and even Jonathan Ericsson.  I dig the theory that Smith should soak up as much of Lidstrom (and Kronwall and Stuart and White and even Kindl and Ericsson and Commodore's) example(s) over training camp, the exhibition season, and hell, given that we're talking about Nicklas Lidstrom, the Wings could either send Lidstrom over to Grand Rapids to practice with the Griffins for the sake of making the Wings' defensive prospects' jaws drop both on the ice and in the weight room or they could send the prospects on field trips or I'm getting carried away, aren't I?  Anyway, I do not dig the theory of the Wings bringing Smith onto the team unless he earns a top-six role outright and is going to be playing every night. He may be nearly NHL-ready, but I just don't see how playing 25+ minutes as the Grand Rapids Griffins' top defenseman isn't as beneficial as playing ten minutes for the Wings every second or third or fifth game as the team's #7 or #8 defenseman.

I'd also suggest that for maturity's sake, attempting to earn an "A" on his jersey on a Griffins team stacked with leadership (see: Brian Lashoff, Garnet Exelby, Greg Amadio, Chris Minard, Chris Conner, Travis Ehrhardt, Tomas Tatar, Doug Janik, Joey MacDonald) might be better for him in the long run as well. Smith's come a long way from the cocky hot dog that couldn't do a drill without attempting to show off or snicker three or four summers ago to reining in his enthusiastic personality while increasing his attention span, but another year's worth of seasoning in the AHL

Unless he plays the kind of hockey that convinces Mike Babcock that Smith's ready to join a rotation of three defensive pairings that plays nearly 20 minutes a night (which Babcock digs doing early in the season) as of October, I just don't see the point of bringing Smith to the NHL simply to plant his butt on the bench.



The rest of this morning's Red Wings-related news fits the term "scattershot" pretty well, or in plain English, it's all over the place.



• Let's start with charitable hockey news, per the Orangeville Citizen, which reports that Grand Rapids Griffins strength and conditioning coach Aaron Downey's House9 charity will hold its annual hockey game in Shellburne, ON this Friday. Smith,Cory Emmerton, Jakub Kindl, Tomas Tatar, former Griffin Jamie Tardif, former Wings Kyle Quincey and Brad May and even Daniel Carcillo(!) will take part in the game;

• According to Carbonnear, Newfoundland's VOCM, Danny Cleary also took some time out of his schedule to take part in the "Bridges to Hope marathon," which benefits low-income family child care;



Shifting focus slightly to alumni news, and this is in the "extended family" category, the Grand Rapids Press's Michael Zuidema notes that former Griffin Michael Nylander, who actually spent last season rehabbing from a serious neck injury incurred on an accidental hit from Derek Meech while Nylander was playing for the Rochester Americans, will get a try-out with the Philadelphia Flyers;


• In the, Alumni We Didn't Know About department, the Victoria Times-Columnist's Mario Annicchiarico and Cleve Dheensaw report that one of Mike Babcock's former assistant coaches when he both coached the University of Lethbridge and the WHL's Spokane Chiefs, one Parry Shockey, will coach the WHL's Victoria Royals (and you get a bonus cookie if you said, "Huh, Victoria, that's where the Red Wings came from back in 1926 when Bruce Norris brought the Victoria Cougars);

• If you're interested in reading a little Russian, Sergei Fedorov's still going strong with Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL, and he told Sovetsky Sport's Sergei Ivanov that he's considering unretiring from international hockey to help Team Russia, and that aside from a minor back injury that's bothering him at present, he's healthy and expects to have an excellent season while wearing the captain's "K". He also reveals that he knew that Ruslan Salei would sign with a KHL team (he signed with Brad McCrimmon's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl) if the Red Wings didn't re-sign him;

• And sticking with both alumni and overseas news, kinda-sorta Wings prospect Daniel Larsson and HV71 Jonkoping of the Swedish Eliteserien will play an outdoor game against Mattias Backman and Linkopings HC in Jonkoping on December 10th. The rink they'll play at will have a capacity of 20,000 fans;


Heading back over to this side of the pond and talking about a member of the House9 game (potentially, anyway), the Toledo Blade's Mark Monroe noted that the Red Wings' decision to re-up their affiliation with the ECHL's Toledo Walleye means that coach Nick Vitucci can expect to receive either McCollum or Jordan Pearce on assignment from the Grand Rapids Griffins:

"It's a first class organization," Walleye coach Nick Vitucci said. "They take great pride in building from within through the draft and developing through their [minor league] system. It's a great opportunity for us to be a part of a Stanley Cup contender."  The current agreement likely means that Detroit, which has five goalies in its system, will assign one of its netminders to Toledo.

"If you do the simple math it looks like we would get one," Vitucci said. "They haven't said at all who we would get. There will be a great battle throughout the Grand Rapid camp. It's certainly in their hands. Whoever we are going to get is going to be a good, quality netminder."  Either Jordan Pearce or Thomas McCollum will likely filter down and end up being the No. 1 goalie for the Walleye. Both have spent time in Toledo the past two seasons.  McCollum, a first round draft choice of the Wings in 2008, has spent parts of the first two seasons of his pro career with the Walleye.  Pearce, who started his career in Toledo in 2009, spent most of last season in Grand Rapids. Pearce had a 2.89 goals against average for the Griffins.

• And my French is nonexistent, but Wings prospect Xavier Ouellet spoke to Sports Juniors Magazine's Pierre-Luc Chenel about the fact that he's been named the captain of the former Montreal Juniors, who've moved to the Montreal suburb of Blainville-Boisbriand, and will be called the Armada. Here's a rough translation of the part of Chenel's article where Ouellet addresses his captaincy Despite two seasons' worth of [QMJHL] experience, Ouellet hasn't worn a letter on his jersey. "It's a great honor and I was surprised. I'd done so when I was younger, with Team Quebec when I was 17. I want to bring leadership and continue to work hard," said the 18-year-old player who plans to keep playing the same way. Over the last two seasons, when the team was in Montreal, Xavier Ouellet had veteran Nicolas Chouinard as his captain. The defender from Terrebonne isn't ashamed to admit that he's learned a lot from Chouinard. "He was always there for the players on the team. He had a great work ethic," [Ouellet] said. "I want to bring the team together." And here's what he said about being drafted by the Wings and attending their summer development camp:

A second-round pick of Detroit in June, Xavier Ouellet attended the team's development camp a few days later. "It was good. I was overwhelmed at first, but ultimately, it's still hockey. It was a dream come true and it's another step toward [making] the NHL."With the other Red Wings' prospects, Ouellet will be in Traverse City in early September to take part in its prospect tournament, which includes several other NHL teams.

He was disappointed that he was ignored by Hockey Canada's World Junior Evaluation Camp, but the 6'1" defenseman was able to find a positive spin on the situation. "It allowed me to work harder and prepare better [for the season]. I want to prove that I belong there," said Ouellet, philisophically, who participated in the Ivan Hlinka tournament (under-18's) a year ago.

Did you know that Gary Bettman, the shamed Commissioner of the NHL, made $7.23 Million in 2008-2009?!!   What the hell is going on?? If we compare that to the latest 2010/2011 salaries of the highest  paid NHL Players, that would put him at #20 on the list, just edging out  Joe Thornton! Now, granted it's not as high as MLB  Commissioner Bud Selig ($18.35 million) or NFL Commissioner Roger  Goodell ($10.9 million), but damn, I'm realistic and we're talking about  hockey here. You know, still to this day I wonder how  Bettman continues to keep his job... he truly is the definition of  douchebag. Just ask Ron MacLean or Don Cherry, or any Winnipeger,  Quebecer, or Ontarian, or Canadian overall for that matter.

Here's the article from the Toronto Sun, it has more details on Bettman and the other NHL Executives' Salaries:

Bettman tops $7M in pay Commissioner Gary Bettman's pay package increased to $7.23 million US in 2008-09, the SportsBusiness Journal reported Monday. While  his pay rose just 1.7% from the previous season, Bettman's compensation  has almost doubled since his pre-lockout total of $3.77 million. Following are NHL executives' salaries for 2008-09 as reported by SportsBusiness Journal based on tax filings:

Commissioner Gary Bettman $7,230,783

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly $1,910,402

Director of hockey operations Colin Campbell $1,389,142

Chief financial officer Craig Harnett $938,367

Chief operating officer John Collins $878,226

Strategist Ed Horne, who is no longer with the league, $794,238

General counsel David Zimmerman $577,394

EVP, finance, Joseph DeSousa $520,299

Director of officiating Stephen Walkom, who is no longer with the league, $488,736

SVP, hockey operations, Mike Murphy, $440,317

In tribute to those NHL Players who fell just behind Bettman in Salary,  here is the list of the Top 20 players after him on this list and their  salaries:


Joe Thornton - $7.2 Million

Brian Campbell - $7 Million

Daniel Alfredsson - $7 Million (Up yours, Alfredsson!!!)

Daniel Briere - $7 Million

Jean-Sebastien Giguere - $7 Million (Are you serious?!!)

Jarome Iginla - $7 Million

Mikka Kiprusoff - $7 Million

Dion Phaneuf - $7 Million

Mark Savard - $7 Million

Kimmo Timonem - $7 Million

Patrick Marleau - $6.9 Million

Pavel Datsyuk - $6.7 Million

Dan Boyle - $6.67 Million

Jay Bouwmeester - $6.6 Million

Paul Stastny - $6.6 Million

Shawn Horcoff - $6.5 Million

Patrick Kane - $6.5 Million

Wade Redden - $6.5 Million

Jonathan Toews - $6.5 Million

Mike Richards - $6.4 Million

Thomas Vanek - $6.4 Million



Is it just me, or don't you wish that Ron MacLean would just body check  Gary Bettman head first into the camera every time he grabs his arm when  Ron asks a tough question?!!

I say our GM and President work out a deal in the dark of night while we're asleep. We have the cash, $8.7M cap space, then we wait and see if Savard retires (free's up another $7.0M), then throw in a few prospects/4 #1 draft choices (which is fine with me since we'll be at the bottom of the pile for that) and the deal is done. Once again Tampa doesn't have the cash to match an offer sheet from anybody....Stamkos is leaving Tampa.

As for Vinny's contract buy out...that isn't happening. They don't have the money to buy Vinny's contract out and they don't have the money to match any offer sheet that comes Stamko's way...front loading a contract is out the window as well. Either way Tampa is f***ed by their old GM and how he managed their money on contracts.

A buyout of Lecavalier would affect Tampa's ability to resign Stamkos. Very low chance of happening, but it would be relevant to the Stamkos situation would it not?

There isn't going to be a buyout...it hasn't even been a thought in Stevie Y's head. Besides that is a BIG "if" and I don't see it happening.