Sports Logic

Written by Wayne Coristine

Remember a few years back, when Gary Bettman and the suits running the league and its teams told us how important it would be to get a new Collective Bargaining Agreement? Remember when they used terms like "cost certainty" and "hard salary cap" to convince us that a work stoppage was likely…and necessary for the financial health of the NHL? Remember when the league was on ESPN for American fans (and there actually are a few, they just have no clue where to watch games anymore)?

But don't worry, Gary Bettman's deal with the Outdoor Life Network..err…Versus to carry games in the US really raised the profile of the league…yup, all 30% (at best) of American households with the network sure brought back lost fans and recruited new ones…same with the multi-concessions, no-money deal to have NBC cover about 15 games a year…in the afternoon no less.

Well, maybe, just maybe, we got misled. It's possible that the NHL power brokers pulled a fast one on us. While the revenues are being shared and the player-league partnership means that teams aren't spending more than 54% of their earnings on salaries and rich teams prop up the money bleeders. Hooray. We got our cost certainty and the hard salary cap works to perfection, right?

Wrong. Somewhere along the line…and we believe it was July 1, 2006, the guys holding the purses went nutty…as purse-carrying men are apt to do. You see, the "hard-cap" means General Managers can't spend more than 56 million bucks on their rosters this year – about the same as last year, after increasing from 48 million after the work stoppage…stopped. But teams started going crazy for free agents the same way they did before…only now with ridiculously long contracts. And the rule about the maximum you can spend on a player per year? Well that would have worked well…had there not been easy ways around it. Front load a big money contract then stretch it out over several years to bring down the annual cap hit, and bam! You've got players making far more than their cap number for a few years, then far below as they taper off. We're looking at you, Detroit. Not a bad move by the General Managers, but it reflects poorly on the league's ironclad CBA to skirt around the rule so easily.

So, we decided to look into the bad money being tossed around the league despite all the cost certainty we were promised as a trade off for a long, hockey free winter. We looked at 25 of the worst contracts handed out by general managers in the salary cap era and how they affected (or will affect) their teams.

No Chance of Return on Investment

1. SHAWN HORCOFF, Oilers - 5 years, $33 million. This is quite possibly the worst contract in hockey for plenty of reasons. The Oilers were the poster child of needing the lockout to be able to compete for players…so what do they do? They still whiff on free agents and, under the flawed guidance of Kevin Lowe, vastly overpaid their own players (Fernando Pisani, Steve Staios) based on a small sample of play rather than the entire body of work. Horcoff is a decent hockey player, but his value was maxed at his previous $3.6 million average, so how he deserved a 65% raise, we'll never know. No way he gets close to this number if they had let him go to Unrestricted Free Agency.
   

2. CHRIS DRURY, Rangers - 5 years, $35.25 million. Chris Drury sure knows how to define a career early huh? Score a few monster playoff goals and get the label clutch. Then go to unrestricted free agency after a career year and hit pay dirt. Of course, when Glen Sather is signing your cheques, you're very likely to get vastly overpaid and end up on our list (we call that foreshadowing!). Drury is the first of four Sather signings to earn at least $7 million in a season…and be nowhere near worth it.
   

3. SCOTT GOMEZ, Canadiens (signed by Rangers) - 7 years, $51.5 million. This was a bad day for hockey. July 1, 2007 was the day Glen Sather signed two good players to great player contracts. Between Gomez and Drury, the Rangers were on the hook for 17 million clams in 2007-08…with Gomez taking in 10 mil. We don't know what's worse: Gomez's albatross contract, or the fact the Canadiens were foolish enough to trade valuable assets to New York as part of the Rangers obvious contract dump.
   

4. WADE REDDEN, Rangers - 6 years, $39 million. Sather didn't just overvalue plateaued centres. No sir, he decided to beef up the blue line by committing massive term and dollars to a guy clearly on the decline. Redden went from elite puckmover to elite dud is an awful hurry…but at least he can afford to live anywhere in New York City on these dollars.
   

5. MICHAL ROSZIVAL, Rangers - 4 years, $20 million. He made SEVEN million dollars in first year of deal, 6 million in second year. Not bad for a guy that's never been an all-star and isn't about to start now.
   

6. MICHAL NYLANDER, Capitals - 4 years, $19.5 million. This was very close to being yet another bad Kevin Lowe signing. Instead, it's a bad George McPhee signing…and Washington is trying as hard as they can to loan Nylander to the KHL and get him the hell off the books.
   

7. ROMAN HAMRLIK, Canadiens - 4 years, $22 million. Hamrlik can definitely help a team's powerplay. But for a $5.5 million ticket, he better tape everybody's stick, balance the books and fly the team's plane. We wonder if Bob Gainey negotiated those terms in the deal…
   

8. JASON BLAKE, Maple Leafs - 5 years, $20 million. Former Leafs GM John Ferguson Jr. penned players to few good deals and a lot of really, really bad ones…like the one to Jason Blake. Of course, Blake fooled a few people by scoring 40 goals in his contract year for the Islanders. While he does have decent hands to net 20-25 goals per year, the 40 was as big an anomaly as this contract is bad. Having his career year at 34 was the peak, not the beginning of the ascent.
   

Long-Term Lockups or Potential Problems?

1. RICK DiPIETRO, Islanders - 15 years, $67.5 million. When we first heard about this deal, we were shocked at the term. However, it also didn't seem like THAT bad of a deal when you look at DiPietro's skill and the cap hit. However, the risk of injury to goalies is high and Slick Rick's hips, knees and everything in between seem to be brittle as can be. The Islanders gambled big and got the second worst case scenario out of it…after all of us ending up dead of course.
   

2. MARIAN HOSSA, Blackhawks - 12 years, $63 million. Somehow, this deal got the league's attention about super long contracts circumventing the cap. Never mind that his former team, the Detroit Red Wings handed out fairly similar deals just months prior to two of their stars. Never mind the fact that the Wings wanted to re-sign Hossa to a similar style deal to remain in Detroit. However, the league should be looking at all these deals. Players signing 8+ year, front-loaded contracts at the back end of their prime isn't good for the game. Hossa will help Chicago for up to two thirds of this deal, but is paying a lot more money than is necessary really a good business model?
   

3. ROBERTO LUONGO, Canucks - 12 years, $81 million. Luongo and the Canucks signed this deal on the heels of the league investigating the Hossa contract in Chicago and yet the NHL doesn't say a peep about it. Because, really, what's wrong with signing a 30 year old goalie to a 12-year deal? It's not like he's already had a major leg issue and it's not like butterfly goalies aren't prone to breaking down in the hips, groins, hamstrings, and knees. Plus, unlike Hossa, the last three years on this contract aren't below the magical million dollar number…so the Canucks aren't sneaking around the cap like Chicago.
   

4. HENRIK ZETTERBERG, Red Wings - 12 years, $73 million. Funny how Ken Holland signs this deal and the media calls him a genius and the league sees no issue with it. A cap number of just over $6 mil for Zetterberg is good value and we won't dispute that…but the funky accounting to get Hank his full 73 million bucks and allow the Wings to afford their other stars should have raised a red flag…but the league obviously enjoys raising Red banners to the rafters.
   

5. JOHAN FRANZEN, Red Wings - 11 years, $43.5 million. If the Zetterberg deal didn't raise any red flags, this one should have sounded an alarm…complete with flashing red lights. Franzen is a very, very good power forward. However, that style of play combined with his age and history in the infirmary should be proof that he's not going to play all 11 years in Detroit. But the Mule will still collect almost $40 million before walking gingerly in retirement.
   

6. VINCENT LECAVALIER, Lightning - 11 years, $85 million. Rumours flew they wanted to unload this contract the same way they did Dan Boyle's (sign the big money extension, then trade him before it kicks in)…now they're on the hook for $78.5 million in the first eight years for a 29-year old player who looks like something is amiss. Our prediction: This will be one of many deals that will be looked back on during a "what were they thinking?" feature on TSN.
   

7. DANIEL BRIERE, Flyers - 8 years, $52 million. The Flyers signed Briere the same summer the Rangers signed Drury and Gomez in what could have been the silliest free agent frenzy of all time. Briere is a good little player and was coming off a career year (are we seeing a pattern here?) in Buffalo. In Philly, he hasn't been close to reproducing those numbers, but at least they can use his many injuries as salary cap relief…thanks, Long Term Injury List!
   

8. BRIAN CAMPBELL, Blackhawks - 8 years, $57 million. We all knew Campbell was going somewhere for huge money – and a huge overpayment – in the summer of 2008. But nobody thought Chicago was that destination. The Hawks are loaded with younger – and better – defencemen and yet still big bucks and term to Campbell. Dale Tallon was a great builder and trader as GM, but his free agency record was puzzling.
   

9. MATTIAS OHLUND, Lightning - 7 years, $25.25 million. As Elliotte Friedman pointed out in his blog on CBC.ca ten days ago, how can the Lightning sign this deal three minutes after the free agency period opens without tampering in any way? That's a long deal for an aging Swede with injury issues…and a big price to pay for a mentor to Viktor Hedman. Of course, we could do a bad contract list of strictly Tampa Bay Lightning…
   

Deals We Just Flat Out Don't Like

1. BRAD RICHARDS, Stars (signed by Lightning) - 5 years, $39 million. Five years ago, Richards was the Conn Smythe winner on a Cup-winning Lightning team that featured Martin St Louis, Vincent Lecavalier, Nikolai Khabibulin and Dan Boyle. Apparently, the team thought he deserved $7.8 mil for his efforts only to be let down…now with the Stars, Richards can't stay healthy…or produce points.
   

2. JAROSLAV SPACEK, Canadiens - 3 years, $11.5 million. Pretty soon the Royal Tyrell Museum is going to ask the Habs for permission to explore the fossils on their blue line.
   

3. KEITH BALLARD, Panthers - 6 years, $25.2 million. Really? Keith Ballard is worth $4.2 million a year? Well, at least the Panthers can afford to pay him that with all the money they bring in from giving out free tickets.
   

4. CRISTOBAL HUET, Blackhawks - 5 years, $22.5 million. For a goalie that looked good in Montreal and Washington, Huet looks to be challenging himself to see how quickly he can lose the starting job. This was another of Tallon's confusing signings.
   

5. J-S GIGUERE, Ducks - 4 years, $24 million. Remember when Giguere was considered one of the game's best goalies? Sorry, remember when his gigantic pads were considered one of the best goaltenders in the league?
   

6. CHRIS PRONGER, Flyers - 7 years, $34.45 million. The dollars aren't a problem for one of the elite defencemen in the league. And he's a perfect fit in Philly. But we don't like the seven years because of his age. At least the Flyers can't escape the cap hit if he retires because he signed the deal the year he turned 35….you know, that rule in the CBA to discourage teams from massively overpaying veterans on the downturn of their careers.
   

7. ED JOVANOVSKI, Coyotes - 5 years, $32.5 million. Jovocop at a $6.5 million cap number? The Coyotes are bankrupt? Weird.
   

8. DAVID LEGWAND, Predators - 6 years, $27 million. The Pred's prized draft pick is now 29 years old, has two 20-goal seasons on his resume and is pretty much a bust as second overall pick. Better hand him $4.5 million anyway.
   

This list could go on and on because NHL executives who fought hard to get cost certainty and a salary cap quickly forgot all about that. Instead, they spend money like drunken sailors…and often not on the most desirable wench in the bar. However, one former General Manager really takes the cake. The one executive, whose team was the poster child for getting to the lockout to be competitive, signed bad deal after bad deal and made questionable trades in the new era…Kevin Lowe. We decided to give a quick rundown of a few of his deals to illustrate why the Oilers missed the playoffs for three years running.

1. SHELDON SOURAY - 5 years, $27 million. The Oilers were reeling after Chris Pronger asked for a trade…and Lowe muffed that too. He wanted to replace the former Hart and Norris defenceman, so he went out and paid big money for a one dimensional player. Souray's big slap shot is great on the powerplay, but his unwillingness to hit and his horrendous defensive play did not warrant 5.4 million clams a year.
   

2. DUSTIN PENNER - 5 years, $21.25 million. Although Penner is playing much better this year, there was no reason for the Oilers to sign him. They needed to accept a rebuild and instead Lowe threw huge cash at the restricted free agent after his offer sheet for Thomas Vanek (7 years, $50 million) was matched in Buffalo. To borrow a line from the great Steve Ludzik, we admire Lowe's courage, but question his judgment.
   

3. LUBOMIR VISNOVSKY - 5 years, $28 million. While Lowe didn't sign this deal, he did trade Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene to Los Angeles for it. The result? The Oilers biggest needs the next season were a right-handed faceoff man and a stay-at-home, punishing defencemen, aka the guys Lowe dealt. On top of that, Visnovsky got hurt and the Oilers learned they have a wealth of puck moving guys like him…who are younger and cheaper than his $5.6 million cap hit. As for the Los Kings, their seven defencemen this year make a combined $10.787 million.
   

4. RYAN SMYTH - 5 years, $31.25 million. Lowe refused to cave to Smyth's asking price and was right to do so. Smyth is over 30 and plays a style that gets him injured often. However, how does it make any sense for Lowe to tell Smyth he's not worth the $5-6 million he was seeking, then turn around and give that kind of money to Shawn Horcoff?