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Post by UberCranky on Sept 14, 2020 12:21:31 GMT -5
"Meh" deal with potential, I guess. He'll almost certainly be overpaid, either in term or money, but that's not really a big deal. I don't see him going all Alzner, so even if you give him a 3 or 4 year deal he should be pretty easy to flip in a year or two, if necessary. Even at $4 million + per year we can easily retain salary to make it palatable, or simply take on another $4 million-slightly-overpaid-player in return. This shouldn't be a back-breaker by any stretch (any more than the Alzner deal, which hasn't been a back-breaker either). As for depth, we have a lot on the left side, but not much of it young. Mete and Romanov, and everybody else is a few years away. Juulsen, Fleury, Brook, all righties, they're not in competition with Edmundson. I liked what I saw from Leskinen, but I guess the organization doesn't feel the same way. Edmundson played 15+ minutes a night for a Stanley Cup winning team. He's big, fairly mobile, plays hard, and just turned 27. We've always complained that we're too easy to play against, so hopefully this helps mitigate that somewhat. According to capfriendly we still have close to $13 million in cap space, so that's not a problem. Even if we sign Edmundson to a $4 million deal there is still more than enough to acquire an elite player, though that would require dealing a Domi or Danault (which might happen anyways). The issue is that we are using cap space on what may not be much of an improvement...but to sign an elite player, we have to give up Domi or Danault. So the lateral question is....who makes us better? Domi/Danault or Edmundson? It's obvious that he is NOT going to make us better if we lose one of them for him. So if we do make an offer sheet for a elite player, how does it make sense to take a step back by losing a better player to sign Edmundson? It defeats the entire purpose of said offer sheet. A few weeks ago, we had money to make a serious run at Dubois. Even 10-11 million was doable. Now we have a back up goalie an a meh defenseman taking up 8-9 million of that. BRILLIANT asset management.......
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Post by seventeen on Sept 14, 2020 15:26:25 GMT -5
Maybe this move is a precursor to something else (though that hardly ever seems to be the case). I don't recall Berg ever making a combination of trades or deals that sort of made sense in combination. He traded Sergachev for Drouin and then let go of Radulov and signed Alzner and then booted Markov so one might look at those as a string of tactics, or simply the reaction from one decision to the next. So if it isn't a precursor to another deal, then we have 3, big, stay at home, relatively not mobile defensemen. As Rick Bowness says, you need a couple of those guys to get you through the playoffs, but the others should be mobile guys. Dallas' biggest defenseman, Oleksiak, may be their fastest skater, and he's ok side to side too, so even the slugs on Dallas are decently mobile. Klingberg, Heiskanen, Lindell, Sekera and even Hanley are either VERY mobile or at least mobile.
My point is that 3 stay at home guys seems a little much. We'll have to see if it remains at 3. Can't see Bergie moving either Weber or Chiarot, so why the interest in Edmundson? Or maybe Berg is quite comfortable with more stay at home guys.
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Post by frozone on Sept 14, 2020 17:41:48 GMT -5
I'm assuming that Edmundson was acquired to help out with the PK, an area that wasn't particularly great during the regular season. If he can improve the PK and help bring down Weber and Chiarot's minutes, then we may pick up another couple of points over the course of the regular season. As for 5v5 and PP, I don't see Edmundson's icetime moving the needle very much at all compared to our other depth guys.
That being said, this will be an expensive price to pay for a marginal improvement. Overall, I can't say that I'm thrilled about this move, but we'll have to see what the dollar and term will be. Oh yea, and which team he signs with...
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Post by seventeen on Sept 15, 2020 23:26:04 GMT -5
Lots of Twitter cheeping about info from Francois Gagnon. Is he a Bergevin ‘insider’? Anyway the scuttlebutt is a Edmundson is agreeing to $3.5 - $4MM deal for 3-5 years.
Thoughts?
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Post by habsorbed on Sept 15, 2020 23:49:00 GMT -5
Lots of Twitter cheeping about info from Francois Gagnon. Is he a Bergevin ‘insider’? Anyway the scuttlebutt is a Edmundson is agreeing to $3.5 - $4MM deal for 3-5 years. Thoughts? And I was worried MB would over pay at $3 million. Well, maybe Eddie and Alzner will be the highest paid tandem in the AHL.
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Post by Habs_fan_in_LA on Sept 15, 2020 23:50:28 GMT -5
"Meh" deal with potential, I guess. He'll almost certainly be overpaid, either in term or money, but that's not really a big deal. I don't see him going all Alzner, so even if you give him a 3 or 4 year deal he should be pretty easy to flip in a year or two, if necessary. Even at $4 million + per year we can easily retain salary to make it palatable, or simply take on another $4 million-slightly-overpaid-player in return. This shouldn't be a back-breaker by any stretch (any more than the Alzner deal, which hasn't been a back-breaker either). As for depth, we have a lot on the left side, but not much of it young. Mete and Romanov, and everybody else is a few years away. Juulsen, Fleury, Brook, all righties, they're not in competition with Edmundson. I liked what I saw from Leskinen, but I guess the organization doesn't feel the same way. Edmundson played 15+ minutes a night for a Stanley Cup winning team. He's big, fairly mobile, plays hard, and just turned 27. We've always complained that we're too easy to play against, so hopefully this helps mitigate that somewhat. According to capfriendly we still have close to $13 million in cap space, so that's not a problem. Even if we sign Edmundson to a $4 million deal there is still more than enough to acquire an elite player, though that would require dealing a Domi or Danault (which might happen anyways). The issue is that we are using cap space on what may not be much of an improvement...but to sign an elite player, we have to give up Domi or Danault. So the lateral question is....who makes us better? Domi/Danault or Edmundson? It's obvious that he is NOT going to make us better if we lose one of them for him. So if we do make an offer sheet for a elite player, how does it make sense to take a step back by losing a better player to sign Edmundson? It defeats the entire purpose of said offer sheet. A few weeks ago, we had money to make a serious run at Dubois. Even 10-11 million was doable. Now we have a back up goalie an a meh defenseman taking up 8-9 million of that. BRILLIANT asset management....... So much speculation is predicated in finding a GM more foolish than Bergevin who will overpay for Domi or Danault. Did Domi or Danault hurt our team. Will getting rid of them solve our multitude of problems. Is there a superstar available? Ive watched teams get knocked out of the playoffs with players who are superior to anything we have. Hall is not a scoring machine much more than Domi. When you are out in the Atlantic in a leaky long liner you don’t get rid of the boat until you have a better one.
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Post by Andrew on Sept 16, 2020 13:01:17 GMT -5
Lots of Twitter cheeping about info from Francois Gagnon. Is he a Bergevin ‘insider’? Anyway the scuttlebutt is a Edmundson is agreeing to $3.5 - $4MM deal for 3-5 years. Thoughts? Seems pretty likely IMO. I can't see us getting him for less than 3 years $10M. MB has weakened his negotiating position by giving up that 5th. Rather than letting the market dictate Edmuson's value, his agent will dictate the value, and MB will play ball. I think it's too much given what we already have invested in defense, and the need for solid puck movers instead of crease clearers. Instead of having guys that are solid in our end wouldn't we rather have guys that bring the play to the other end of the rink?
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Post by Willie Dog on Sept 16, 2020 13:24:22 GMT -5
Lots of Twitter cheeping about info from Francois Gagnon. Is he a Bergevin ‘insider’? Anyway the scuttlebutt is a Edmundson is agreeing to $3.5 - $4MM deal for 3-5 years. Thoughts? Seems pretty likely IMO. I can't see us getting him for less than 3 years $10M. MB has weakened his negotiating position by giving up that 5th. Rather than letting the market dictate Edmuson's value, his agent will dictate the value, and MB will play ball. I think it's too much given what we already have invested in defense, and the need for solid puck movers instead of crease clearers. Instead of having guys that are solid in our end wouldn't we rather have guys that bring the play to the other end of the rink? MB, CJ and even going back to MTHead, there has always been a defense first/build from the net out mentality... Its why when we're down by a goal with minutes left in the game they put out 4th liners.... Also this mentality is why we haven't had a stud forward in decades.
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Post by BadCompany on Sept 16, 2020 13:27:26 GMT -5
Lots of Twitter cheeping about info from Francois Gagnon. Is he a Bergevin ‘insider’? Anyway the scuttlebutt is a Edmundson is agreeing to $3.5 - $4MM deal for 3-5 years. Thoughts? Seems pretty likely IMO. I can't see us getting him for less than 3 years $10M. MB has weakened his negotiating position by giving up that 5th. Rather than letting the market dictate Edmuson's value, his agent will dictate the value, and MB will play ball. I think it's too much given what we already have invested in defense, and the need for solid puck movers instead of crease clearers. Instead of having guys that are solid in our end wouldn't we rather have guys that bring the play to the other end of the rink? According to this site we're actually one of the better teams when it comes to break-outs. I'd have to look for it, but I seemed to recall that the analytics said we were also very bad at giving up high-danger shots against (don't quote me on that). So perhaps this is just a case of giving a little in one area (zone breakouts) to improve in another (high-danger shots against). At any rate, I think we'll have to see Edmundson play before really passing judgement. The analytics community wasn't too fond of Ben Chiarot either, and he was pretty solid for us, in my opinion. By the same token, they were very high on David Schlemko, so...
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Post by Tankdriver on Sept 16, 2020 13:48:52 GMT -5
If he pay's 3.5 to 4 million on 3 to 5 year contract than he really has lost his marbles. Teams are looking to cut costs everywhere....Players should be taking hits, not getting raises.
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Post by folatre on Sept 16, 2020 14:52:57 GMT -5
Carolina watched him all season and did not deem him worthy of a new contract worth more than the one he played for under for them.
I get it that having depth is nice, but handing a stay at home d-man anything more than three years of term and $3 million per in this depressed market is a waste of resources.
It kind of seems like the summer of 2017 when Montreal had just finished the season allowing the fourth fewest goals in the entire league, yet Bergevin saw fit to remake nearly the entirety of his d-corps and then lo and behold the 2017-18 was vastly worse. Fast forward to 2019-20, the last impression that I came away with in the ten post-season games was that a well-rested Price was excellent, the d-corps was generally quite good, the centres looked good, and the wingers never score. Did Bergevin really see a defense that looked so shaky that he needs to overpay for an average d-man like Edmundson?
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Post by frozone on Sept 16, 2020 14:56:49 GMT -5
Seems pretty likely IMO. I can't see us getting him for less than 3 years $10M. MB has weakened his negotiating position by giving up that 5th. Rather than letting the market dictate Edmuson's value, his agent will dictate the value, and MB will play ball. I think it's too much given what we already have invested in defense, and the need for solid puck movers instead of crease clearers. Instead of having guys that are solid in our end wouldn't we rather have guys that bring the play to the other end of the rink? According to this site we're actually one of the better teams when it comes to break-outs. I'd have to look for it, but I seemed to recall that the analytics said we were also very bad at giving up high-danger shots against (don't quote me on that). So perhaps this is just a case of giving a little in one area (zone breakouts) to improve in another (high-danger shots against). At any rate, I think we'll have to see Edmundson play before really passing judgement. The analytics community wasn't too fond of Ben Chiarot either, and he was pretty solid for us, in my opinion. By the same token, they were very high on David Schlemko, so... You're right, last season we gave up the 8th most high danger scoring chances 5v5. The crazy thing is that we had the highest number of high danger scoring chances for in a landslide. So our ratio of HD scoring chances for to against was very good (55.5%), good for 3rd overall in the league.
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Post by seventeen on Sept 16, 2020 15:32:59 GMT -5
Carolina watched him all season and did not deem him worthy of a new contract worth more than the one he played for under for them. I get it that having depth is nice, but handing a stay at home d-man anything more than three years of term and $3 million per in this depressed market is a waste of resources. It kind of seems like the summer of 2017 when Montreal had just finished the season allowing the fourth fewest goals in the entire league, yet Bergevin saw fit to remake nearly the entirety of his d-corps and then lo and behold the 2017-18 was vastly worse. Fast forward to 2019-20, the last impression that I came away with in the ten post-season games was that a well-rested Price was excellent, the d-corps was generally quite good, the centres looked good, and the wingers never score. Did Bergevin really see a defense that looked so shaky that he needs to overpay for an average d-man like Edmundson? I'd be careful projecting what happened in 'the bubble' to what we can look forward to next year. We have seen this team get off to hot starts when everyone is healthy, and then tail off as the season wears on. Price was healthy and rested, Weber was healthy and rested. Suzuki and KK had the benefit of an off season to improve aspects of their game and to get healthy (in KK's instance). they also had a gift horse handed to them and for a loser team (don't know what else to call a .500 hockey team in a 3 point environment) to get a second chance, it invigorated and pumped up everyone. Especially since they had the psychological incentive of being dissed by everyone. How many of those factors are going to play in the coming season? How long do those factors last, if they are present? Some guys could improve (Drouin, Domi and the kids) but some guys could become what they were (Chiarot). What if Price gets hurt, even a bit? Sure, they have Allen, but he's no Price. What if Weber loses another quarter step? There are potential positives, of course, like Romanov, who will make the team and improve the transition game. Suzuki and KK can get better still, and I'm counting on that. I just think the optimum potential for this team is when some more kids join...like Norlinder, Struble, Ylonen, Caufield. Anyway, it's a mystery to me how good this team will be next year. There's a lot of potential variance.
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Post by drkcloud on Sept 16, 2020 17:46:53 GMT -5
Apron Basu reporting it's a done deal... 4 years @ 3.5
I'm surprised he signed without going to UFA. Makes me feel we overpaid
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Post by HFTO on Sept 16, 2020 18:13:46 GMT -5
Lots out there saying he’s a pretty solid d man and they didn’t pay him more than Chariot.... 3.5 is chump change he was making 3.1 so that’s far from an over pay. Let’s wait and see we could use some nastiness at the back end. If MB ever had a off season to take advantage of other teams this is the one he has picks and players he can move .... can he pull the Habs out of the swamp we’ll see....let’s hope there is a next season first.
HFTO
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Post by Willie Dog on Sept 16, 2020 18:18:27 GMT -5
Our cap space is down to 10 mill
He gets a modified NTC
Looks MB will keep 10 mill in cap space to help Geoffey recoup his losses because the Ding Dong centre isn't generating revenue either but property taxes (7 mill in 2017) and utilities still have to be paid
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Post by GNick99 on Sept 16, 2020 18:19:42 GMT -5
I wouldn't have acquired Edmundson. But it may work out.
He gives some size and hits. Good on PK. But another 3.5 of cap space gone
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Post by Skilly on Sept 16, 2020 18:44:42 GMT -5
According to this site we're actually one of the better teams when it comes to break-outs. I'd have to look for it, but I seemed to recall that the analytics said we were also very bad at giving up high-danger shots against (don't quote me on that). So perhaps this is just a case of giving a little in one area (zone breakouts) to improve in another (high-danger shots against). At any rate, I think we'll have to see Edmundson play before really passing judgement. The analytics community wasn't too fond of Ben Chiarot either, and he was pretty solid for us, in my opinion. By the same token, they were very high on David Schlemko, so... You're right, last season we gave up the 8th most high danger scoring chances 5v5. The crazy thing is that we had the highest number of high danger scoring chances for in a landslide. So our ratio of HD scoring chances for to against was very good (55.5%), good for 3rd overall in the league. I was about to post the same thing We are great at breaking out and at getting scoring chances , so puck moving and transition is not the problem ... .... converting is . Even a blind man can see this, but we never address it properly
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Post by jkr on Sept 16, 2020 19:19:51 GMT -5
Our cap space is down to 10 mill He gets a modified NTC Looks MB will keep 10 mill in cap space to help Geoffey recoup his losses because the Ding Dong centre isn't generating revenue either but property taxes (7 mill in 2017) and utilities still have to be paid Jeez. How does a 5-6 guy who is now on his 3rd team in 3 seasons get a deal with any kind of NTC? The bottom pairing should have some flexibility. They should be interchangeable parts that can be changed every year or two. Now he is calling the shots on potential trades.
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Post by GNick99 on Sept 16, 2020 19:33:27 GMT -5
According to this site we're actually one of the better teams when it comes to break-outs. I'd have to look for it, but I seemed to recall that the analytics said we were also very bad at giving up high-danger shots against (don't quote me on that). So perhaps this is just a case of giving a little in one area (zone breakouts) to improve in another (high-danger shots against). At any rate, I think we'll have to see Edmundson play before really passing judgement. The analytics community wasn't too fond of Ben Chiarot either, and he was pretty solid for us, in my opinion. By the same token, they were very high on David Schlemko, so... You're right, last season we gave up the 8th most high danger scoring chances 5v5. The crazy thing is that we had the highest number of high danger scoring chances for in a landslide. So our ratio of HD scoring chances for to against was very good (55.5%), good for 3rd overall in the league. We had 3 defensemen in top 10 on turn overs.
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Post by folatre on Sept 16, 2020 19:37:56 GMT -5
There is cap space this year to have the whole stable of LHD in Montreal. But the following season (2021-22), even if Seattle wants nothing to do with Edmundson, Kulak or Mete, Bergevin will have to dump someone somewhere because cap space will be extremely tight.
Not only Romanov, but also the third pair RHD and the 7th d-man on the club will all need to be super cheap contracts to deal with the pay bumps Bergevin's guys are going to extract from him.
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Post by seventeen on Sept 16, 2020 19:59:11 GMT -5
I think most teams would be happy paying a 2nd pairing defenseman $3.5 MM a year. The question is "What is Joel Edmundson?"
This got me thinking about salary structure and positions. Here's my thoughts assuming a CAP of $81MM
Goal - #1 making $6MM, backup at $1MM, maybe $2 if he's a decent backup? Say 7-8MM for goalies
DEfense - One elite guy at $8MM...a Hedman or Makar, etc. Maybe you can pay him less if you sign at an early age, but allow that much, then about $18 MM for the other 5. Something like 6,5,4, and 2 x 1.5
Up front, I once again want an elite centre, so set aside $10MM for say, an offer sheet to an Aho kind of guy. Then $7 for your #2 centre, (have to pay for quality), and another $19MM for the remaining 4. That leaves $14MM for the remaining bottom 6.
To summarize...goal - $7, Defense $26MM and Forwards $48MM. One obvious change from real life is that teams generally have more than 20 players signed under the CAP. At least 23 if not more...so some individual contracts may have to be lower to pay for the depth needed.
AS an exercise, The Leafs currently have this salary structure: 6.6, 15.8 and 51.7 = 74.1 but they have some D becoming UFA's and need to replace 2 of them and pay an RFA (Dermott) as well.
The Habs have 14.8, 27.7 and 28.7 (with Domi to be re-signed) = 71.2.
I'm not counting any odd stuff like guys on Long term disability etc, so don't take this as anything but a hypothetical exercise, which ls, actually, completely useless.
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Post by PTH on Sept 16, 2020 22:08:07 GMT -5
I think most teams would be happy paying a 2nd pairing defenseman $3.5 MM a year. The question is "What is Joel Edmundson?" This got me thinking about salary structure and positions. I've often thought we someone should come up with a shadow roster: no names, just a salary structure, and then look around the league and see who fits it best. 3d line C ? 3.5M #1D: 9M, or if he's a lesser #1, 6M and expect to pay out more to the #2 through #4, etc. When you come down to it, overall just having a tolerable roster probably starts at around 50 or 60M, so the actual room to overpay key players isn't nearly as much as we might expect.
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Post by seventeen on Sept 16, 2020 22:58:38 GMT -5
I think most teams would be happy paying a 2nd pairing defenseman $3.5 MM a year. The question is "What is Joel Edmundson?" This got me thinking about salary structure and positions. I've often thought we someone should come up with a shadow roster: no names, just a salary structure, and then look around the league and see who fits it best. 3d line C ? 3.5M #1D: 9M, or if he's a lesser #1, 6M and expect to pay out more to the #2 through #4, etc. When you come down to it, overall just having a tolerable roster probably starts at around 50 or 60M, so the actual room to overpay key players isn't nearly as much as we might expect. This is where low tax regime teams like those in Texas, Florida and Carolina (Nevada?) have a huge advantage, about 20%. It isn't a coincidence that if those teams have ok management, they're likely to be strong teams. They can pay less and still satisfy players' demands. Does Stamkos settle for $9MM if it's almost anywhere else? He probably nets as much as Tavares at $11MM. This HAS to be fixed as it's not a level playing field. Reduce the CAP for those teams or raise it for the others. You don't need rocket science in order to get is closer.
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Post by habsorbed on Sept 16, 2020 23:17:46 GMT -5
I think most teams would be happy paying a 2nd pairing defenseman $3.5 MM a year. The question is "What is Joel Edmundson?" This got me thinking about salary structure and positions. I've often thought we someone should come up with a shadow roster: no names, just a salary structure, and then look around the league and see who fits it best. 3d line C ? 3.5M #1D: 9M, or if he's a lesser #1, 6M and expect to pay out more to the #2 through #4, etc. When you come down to it, overall just having a tolerable roster probably starts at around 50 or 60M, so the actual room to overpay key players isn't nearly as much as we might expect. One only needs to look how other teams have distributed their cap, particularly those who have been successful. We have way too much invested in goal and dmen. This is particularly problematic when we have been hurting for scoring which is our need. As I posted earlier there are few if any teams that have 4 dmen all earning over $2million. We now have 4 over $3.5 million earning a total of $20 million. And few teams invest more than $10 million in goal and we are at $15 million. so it's a double whammy preventing us from getting elite forwards. Taking a look at the salaries of the top 4 dmen of each of the 4 finalist this year: LV = $17.5 million NYI = $15.5 Stars= $14.5 TB = $19 So we are much higher then all of them with the exception of TB who we are still above at $20. And then you couple this with the goalie salaries and you see our problem: LV = $12 NYI = $8 Stars = $7.5 TB = $10.8 Habs are $15!!! So we are way over on both dmen and goalies. Yet our problem for years has been top 6 forwards. And our highest paid forward is at $5.5 and he is overpaid for what he brings. It won't surprise anyone to know the 4 finalist teams all have elite forwards earning $9.5 million except for NYI which has 4 players earning $5.5 or more. So it is clear that the formula MB is implementing is not a model that Cup contenders have followed. One only has to do the math to realize that MB is making it impossible for us to get any elite forwards. And we wonder why we are unable to contend.
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Post by PTH on Sept 17, 2020 2:47:52 GMT -5
I've often thought we someone should come up with a shadow roster: no names, just a salary structure, and then look around the league and see who fits it best. 3d line C ? 3.5M #1D: 9M, or if he's a lesser #1, 6M and expect to pay out more to the #2 through #4, etc. When you come down to it, overall just having a tolerable roster probably starts at around 50 or 60M, so the actual room to overpay key players isn't nearly as much as we might expect. One only needs to look how other teams have distributed their cap, particularly those who have been successful. We have way too much invested in goal and dmen. This is particularly problematic when we have been hurting for scoring which is our need. As I posted earlier there are few if any teams that have 4 dmen all earning over $2million. We now have 4 over $3.5 million earning a total of $20 million. And few teams invest more than $10 million in goal and we are at $15 million. so it's a double whammy preventing us from getting elite forwards. Taking a look at the salaries of the top 4 dmen of each of the 4 finalist this year: LV = $17.5 million NYI = $15.5 Stars= $14.5 TB = $19 So we are much higher then all of them with the exception of TB who we are still above at $20. And then you couple this with the goalie salaries and you see our problem: LV = $12 NYI = $8 Stars = $7.5 TB = $10.8 Habs are $15!!! So we are way over on both dmen and goalies. Yet our problem for years has been top 6 forwards. And our highest paid forward is at $5.5 and he is overpaid for what he brings. It won't surprise anyone to know the 4 finalist teams all have elite forwards earning $9.5 million except for NYI which has 4 players earning $5.5 or more. So it is clear that the formula MB is implementing is not a model that Cup contenders have followed. One only has to do the math to realize that MB is making it impossible for us to get any elite forwards. And we wonder why we are unable to contend. Nice work, but I tried considering it position by position, not just groupings. The toughest part was figuring out how to account for rookie contracts, which lead to very reasonable salaries for key players, but which don't last long, so the structure has to allow for higher paid guys to move on and new kids replace them, to make it possible to sign the guys going for their 2nd or 3d contracts...
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Post by UberCranky on Sept 17, 2020 3:48:51 GMT -5
And we wonder why we are unable to contend. Umm...I take great umbridge with that statement (fancy word that makes me look edumacated ). There is no "we" in HabsRus that wonders why we can't contend. It's a strictly a Bergy licking the mirror problem because he's convinced he's moving forward.....but fails to deal with the issue. Nobody would care less if he signed a 5-6th defenseman if we had a young, dynamic forward group. As it is, he's simply plugging away with second raters where we have already overspent.
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Post by Boston_Habs on Sept 17, 2020 6:07:50 GMT -5
4 years at $3.5 million for probably a league average veteran on the left side of the D? Sure, I guess.
Karl Alzner, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson.
Again, it hard to say if this is a worthwhile signing unless you know what the rest of the roster picture looks like and what the alternatives were.
You need quality depth guys at reasonable contracts but not at the expense of addressing the biggest needs or sacrificing better, internal options.
From my standpoint, backup goalie and another depth/league average dman are not our biggest problems. We need a real infusion of high quality talent in the top 4 D and upfront scoring.
My fear is this is more classic Bergevin, low risk low return tinkering that won’t make much of a difference in the performance.
A move like thus is great when you already have the key pieces in place and you need to fill in around the edges. But maybe we do and I just don’t see it....
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Post by jkr on Sept 17, 2020 6:10:42 GMT -5
I've often thought we someone should come up with a shadow roster: no names, just a salary structure, and then look around the league and see who fits it best. 3d line C ? 3.5M #1D: 9M, or if he's a lesser #1, 6M and expect to pay out more to the #2 through #4, etc. When you come down to it, overall just having a tolerable roster probably starts at around 50 or 60M, so the actual room to overpay key players isn't nearly as much as we might expect. One only needs to look how other teams have distributed their cap, particularly those who have been successful. We have way too much invested in goal and dmen. This is particularly problematic when we have been hurting for scoring which is our need. As I posted earlier there are few if any teams that have 4 dmen all earning over $2million. We now have 4 over $3.5 million earning a total of $20 million. And few teams invest more than $10 million in goal and we are at $15 million. so it's a double whammy preventing us from getting elite forwards. Taking a look at the salaries of the top 4 dmen of each of the 4 finalist this year: LV = $17.5 million NYI = $15.5 Stars= $14.5 TB = $19 So we are much higher then all of them with the exception of TB who we are still above at $20. And then you couple this with the goalie salaries and you see our problem: LV = $12 NYI = $8 Stars = $7.5 TB = $10.8 Habs are $15!!! So we are way over on both dmen and goalies. Yet our problem for years has been top 6 forwards. And our highest paid forward is at $5.5 and he is overpaid for what he brings. It won't surprise anyone to know the 4 finalist teams all have elite forwards earning $9.5 million except for NYI which has 4 players earning $5.5 or more. So it is clear that the formula MB is implementing is not a model that Cup contenders have followed. One only has to do the math to realize that MB is making it impossible for us to get any elite forwards. And we wonder why we are unable to contend. Just a comment on the goalies. TB also clearly believes in paying an elite goalie top dollars as AV will be making 9.5 for the next 7 seasons beginning next season. The key difference though is that Vasilevsky is only 26 & will be about 33 when he finishes this deal. Where they also diverge is paying over 4 million for a backup.
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Post by Tankdriver on Sept 17, 2020 8:05:52 GMT -5
I just don't see where all the bodies are going to line up....LD: Chariot, Edmundson, Romanov, Kulak, Mete. Right side: Weber, Petry, Fleury, Juulsen. Extra's: Alzinger, Ouellet, Oloffson. Intriguing: Brook, Leskinen. I know Mete played a little RD last year but someone on the Left side has got to be going out. If you do dollar for dollar, one would think Chariot, but I just don't know. No matter what, I don't see that mobile, offensive defenceman like a Markov to help out the power play. If we had one of those, I think it would help immensely.
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