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Made By cole*
Monday, July 25, 2005
This 6 day buyout opportunity is the best thing that could happen for a lot of GM's. Some of these old contracts that are just devouring cap space and limiting potential growth for the future. For instance, John Leclair and Tony Amonte have been bought out clearing up over 10 million dollars of cap space for a Flyers team that has good young players joining the ranks in Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, and they have kept solid veterans in the ranks like Keith Primeau, Michael Handzus and Jeremy Roenick.Do you think Phoenix isn't thrilled with the idea of clearing up the 2.85 million that would have gone to Brian Savage? Mike Modano is expressing his interest and Phoenix will save money if they sign him, and be able to make a splash in the free agent market. A nice combination of experience and skills is being assembled in the desert.
The buyout rears it's ugly head on good players too. Sure Savage, Amonte and LeClair were over the hill, making way too much money for what they were, but what about the players who still have something to offer, but were just making too much thanks to their signing with a big market team. Ray Whitney is a solid player, but there are just too many other financial obligations on a deep Detroit team. Why pay Derian Hatcher almost 5 million when a younger Jiri Fischer can do the job for 1.3 mil?
This can work in favour of other teams as well. If I was Mike Keenan in Florida, I'd pick up Darren McCarty from Detroit. He's just been put on waivers, and it would instantly give your team grit and championship experience. Florida has great young players on the ice, and they'll need someone to show them what it takes. McCarty can give you a part of that for around a million dollars.
The free agent market opens up for the free for all on August 1, and it will be interesting to see who is going to take advantage of the buyers market. Instead of players just going to the highest bidder, values will be pretty well determined, and unless some GM makes a horrible over offer, most guys will be forced to look at a situation they're going into, and most GM's will look to fill specific needs. For instance, with Montreal having to sign Dagenais, Ryder, Ribeiro and Theodore as well as Alexei Kovalev, do they still need to keep Saku Koivu? It's a chance for Bob Gainey to keep him at a low price, and that is still a positive thing because he is a staple in Montreal's community.
August 1 things get crazy. The real big story to me is how Colorado will manage to keep Adam Foote and Peter Forsberg, because it seems like simple mathematics disallows it. So soon I'll start the Forsberg watch, and the Scotty Niedermayer watch, and I'll weigh in on the best possible free agent situations in a couple of days.
Posted by Jon at 7:03 PM | | e-mail me