NHL 2013: Off-Season Running Thread

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Thanks, JC. That period of the Griffiths, McGaw, Keenan and Burke all slurs together in my memory bank.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Wikipedia made it easy for me:
He was traded on January 17, 1999, to the Florida Panthers, with Bret Hedican, Brad Ference, and Vancouver's third-round choice in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft (Robert Fried) for Ed Jovanovski, Dave Gagner, Mike Brown, Kevin Weekes, and Florida's first-round choice in the 2000 draft (Nathan Smith).

The fact is, when you trade a superstar, you are never going to get equal value back, unless you get another superstar in return.
They did alright though at face value. Weekes was still a top young goalie prospect. Dave Gagner was supposed to have a couple of serviceable years left although he lasted just one, and you can blame the Canucks scouting department for screwing up a first round pick. The big piece coming back, of course was Ed Jovanovski who was a first overall pick in 1994 and played a major role in the Panthers run to the cup final. He had superstar written all over him until his final year in Florida. He did come up short of those expectations, I think, but he was still a three-time all-star and for three straight seasons was named the team's top defenceman.
I think they did OK, there I have seen far worse deals go down.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

The Maple Leafs have bought out Colby Armstrong.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=399599

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Bring me up to speed, please.

Haven't been following hockey lately. Back in the country, Winnipeg is my closest NHL city.

Wings are scheduled there on a Saturday in October.

Should I start putting out feelers for tickets/pass, or is there going to be a work stoppage?

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

all up in the air. I personally think there will be a labour stoppage considering they waited until yesterday to actually start negotiations. While lines have not been publicly drawn in the sand yet, rumours that the league will be going after guaranteed contracts and the players looking for upwards of 65% of revenue has me thinking this won't be a simple signing off on a renewal of the current cba with a few tweaks.

But that's just me. Fehr doesn't seem as militant as Goodenow, but he seems to have better control over his charges, is going out of his way to build that unity

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Beef must be happy this afternoon with the Schulz signing.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

I'm afraid Beef is correct. It took them this long to start talks? Both sides are probably in no hurry to get anything done, but if they were as concerned about piecing together a new CBA as we'd like to think, the staredowns might have started sooner.

Fehr is better at this than Goodenow. But a guess here is that he's not going to back down given that revenues are increasing. Why should the players take less - again? They took a sizeable haircut during the last lockout and a guess here is that they won't be eager to repeat.

The cap is likely to increase, yet the owners will cry poor?

The only saving grace for fans is that the league has to know how scarring, even embarrassing, it was to lose a season over this in 2004-05. Doing that again will kill whatever momentum has been rebuilt since.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Smoking a celebratory cigar as I type this looking out over a rainy Departure Bay. Life is good my friend. Actually Schulz is just icing on the cake.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Nice to see that he picked a small Canadian market. Obviously I would have fathered he sign in Vancouver but I understand why he would pick the Oilers.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

Yeah, I think the big thing for him is opportunity to make an impact and he has the best chance to do that in Edmonton. I don't think they guaranteed ice time or anything like that, all he had to do was look at a depth chart. I think they have some nice DMen coming but they're at least a year or two away yet. He probably starts the year on the second pairing and on the second pp unit.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

That would be the bigger worry if I'm a GM. Just too much risk of that very thing. Any player. Get an injury and you're out long-term or come back as a fraction of the player you used to be and the club is still paying out the nose.

That's one thing I really, really dislike about team sports. Tiger Woods or Lindsay Vonn or Rafael Nadal get injured and miss half a year of competition, they just don't get paid. Fair enough. Greg Oden blows out a knee or two and he still gets millions? (May not be his fault, per se, but still he's not there.) Payment should be for performance.

 

Re: NHL 2012: Off-Season Running Thread

65 percent of the gross revenue? That's insane. What's the NBA? Like 51 or 52 percent? And the NFL isn't all that much higher, IIRC.