Big slow and ugly.....that's why he looks like a Flyer:)

so, the Kings get him for free?

I would imagine so...or pretty close to free...i am sure there is cash involved.....perhaps Philly moves up in the draft and gets the better of the 2 3rd round picks?

Basically....futures is never much at all.

Hurricanes sign Oleg Tverdosky to a 3 year deal worth $7.5

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?id=132424

but but but I hate Ville Nieminen!

I'm reading a lot of Zetterberg and the Leafs with either the Leafs trading for him or putting him on an offer sheet.


The Rangers are interested in Tie Domi and Ziggy Palffy.

Zhamnov signs with Boston.

Kinda wondered how would Roenick get along with Hatcher. I would guess he would still be pissed that Hatcher broke his jaw in '99.

for different reasons, I presume

I hear it spun as a possible three-way deal involving Boston and Joe Thornton. With Thornton coming to Detroit. No idea where these are coming from.

Free? Well, you get his big salary and loud, annoying ways. That doesn't sound free to me. :) Then again, I've always liked JR despite his loud, annoying ways.

Jason Allison is taking a physical...





in Buffalo.

Obviously. Palffy's the type of enforcer the Rangers covet.




Anywho, if the Rangers have signed Nieminen and eventually sign Domi. I think they should try to bring back Barnaby.

A Nieminen/Barnaby/Domi line would be the greatest thing invented. Cocky and Funny.

Umm, do you know what you're talking about? That's a Top 10 defense, and you didn't even mention Hale!!! No true #1 guy, but damn lot of solid #3's in there.

ML just signed with the Kerry Fraser fan club :D

Dan McGillis - $8.4 million/2 years
Vladimir Malakhov - $7.2 million/2 years

I think Lou was a bit desperate after losing Niedermayer... Malakhov more than Hatcher or Rathje? McGillis more than Foote? Can you see McGillis getting $5.6 million pre-rollback?

wait a minute...

Dan McGillis gets 4.2 Million? Malakhov 3.6?
are you fucking kidding me?

Take a look...
http://www2.sportsnet.ca/nhl/free_agent_tracker.html

McGillis, I at least understand how it could have happened -- there were a LOT of teams interested in him, so the bidding could have just gotten out of hand.

But Malakhov????

Chelios signs a 1 yr deal with Wings.

Wow. Dan McGillis isn't that good. That's way over paying. Same with Malakhov. I am surprised to see Lamoriello give out such generous sums.

Wings also signed Johan Franzen a forward out of Sweden they drafted a couple years back.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=132439

Rangers sign Ville Nieminen and Jason Ward. First time I've seen Nieminen on one of the big sites and the first time I've heard Ward was being signed.

the devs D has potential, but overall, i think Philly will steamroll us. Stevens head is still a questionmark. White is a goon, 4th D at best. Martin and Hale are still quite young and have a ways to go. I like Rafalski, but he's not all that big. And neither are any of our fowards, really. Plus, Elias' health is still a question mark.

I love the Devs, but I'm worried.

After seeing these figures, I'll just have to say this:

Someone has lost his mind and it isn't Glen Sather. Malik is a bargain at 2.5M compared to the above. Especially Malakhov.... :eek:

Therien didn't exactly light the world on fire in his time with Dallas.

Alex Tanguay and Kurt Sauer have signed their qualifying offers.

I'd say "those numbers must be wrong", but they've been right every time I've said that so far. Lamoriello has really made a mess for himself. If you figure Rafalski got at least 3, that only leaves 12 million to sign Gomez, Elias, Friesen, White, Martin, Kozlov, Langenbrunner, Hale, Gionta, Brown, and a backup for Brodeur. Some of those guys are going to have to go.

Edit: it turns out Rafalski got 4.2 per. There could be some confusion between his deal and the one McGillis got. If they both got 4.2, ouch.

Knowing Lou, he has to have some sort of plan. I'm hoping those numbers aren't right for the D-men, but with Niedermeyer gone he probably did have to overpay a bit.

How do RFA's work? I see people talking about having to sign all their RFA's -- at this point aren't they supposed to be UFA's? Can someone walk me through this as I'm confused by the RFA's!

~rpi-fan

It's looking more and more like Milbury plain old kicked Lou's butt this offseason (draft and free agency) for the first time in a long time.

RFA's are restricted free agents. Teams had to give them a qualifying offer for the team to retain their rights. If they did not make a qualifying offer, the player would become a unrestricted free agent.

Players earning $660,000 or less will be entitled to qualifying offers (QO) at 110% of their prior year's salary; players earning more than $660,000 and up to $1 million will be entitled to QOs at 105% of prior year's salary; players earning more than $1 million will be entitled to QO at 100% of their prior year's salary.

TSN had McGillis counting $1.1 million against the cap but now they've taken it down along with the numbers for Rafalski and Malakhov

Who are the expected UFA's next season?

The comments on signing the RFAs is to sign them to long term contracts. I am not sure what happens if the player hasn't signed the qualifying offer yet. I would think until that happens they don't count against the cap.

Ah -- so pretty much all RFA's were qualified, and they'll only change teams if they can't reach long-term deals and teams don't want them for one season (and decide to trade them).

There won't be an exodus of RFA's hitting the market, since they've all arleady been qualified?

Thanks!
~rpi-fan

The other option is that another team can make them an offer but the losing team will receive draft pick compensation if they don't match the offer sheet.

saw a list the other day, but can't find it, but probably a better crop than this year.

a couple I know off the top of my head: Thornton, Samsonov, Lidstrom (I think), Hejduk

Great post and what I've been screaming to happen in baseball for year. Unfortunately, for them, it's quite a bit further off, I fear.

That said, when you try to make this argument in baseball, all the Yankee, Boston, etc fans get all up in arms about how unfair and communist (?!? is that even an insult any more- nothing like making fun of a country where bread lines were "popular"- it's like beating up the handicap kid) the system would be.

SI

That remains to be seen. The new CBA actually lowered the compensation (given in draft picks) teams have to give up for signing another team's RFA. Combined with the lower (well, theoretically) salaries because of the cap, that may make it plausible for teams to go after restricted players that are mid-level talents and are stuck with low qualifying offers.

There's been some talk, for example, that teams could really put pressure on the Flyers, even after the Roenick move, by offering deals to RFA's like Simon Gagne, Kim Johnsson and Robert Esche. Bob Clarke may not have the cap room to sign all of them if they can get deals in the $2-3 million range elsewhere. Esche, for one, has a qualifying number barely above the minimum salary; if another team offered him anything up to $2 million, all they'd have to give the Flyers is a second-round pick (assuming the Flyers don't match the offer, which they have the right to do.) Not a bad deal for a team that needs a goalie.

The RFA market is going to be interesting to watch in the next few weeks, once this feeding frenzy on the UFA's is done.

Perhaps they've gotten it all wrong then.

Wow. The season hasn't even started yet and this thread is already up to ~15th on the posts count for GD.

SI

Never have to go far for a sound bite for LA reporters. Considering how lazy the LA reporters can be, I guess that's a good thing.

SI

Heh! We are a small, but radbid following here! :D But during these last four days the NHL has been a mad house! A maaaaaaaad house!

Did Domi sign with the Pens?

I hope so....i like Tie......but i think he is over.

Oh, oh...

Mojo 640 in Toronto is reporting that the Toronto Maple Leafs have made a substancial offer to Detroit forward Henrik Zetterberg.

Offer to Zetterberg as an RFA, or offer to the Wings for Zetterberg?

Jovo, Ohlund, tho both have expressed an interest in long term deals.

Edit. Lecavalier.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...31/?hub=Canada

Adding to the intrigue is that GMs have one eye on this year's crop and another on the 2006 free-agent list. Liberalized free agency kicks in next summer when players with eight years of NHL experience or anyone 29 and younger can qualify for unrestricted free agency if they're out of a contract.

The likes of Joe Thornton, Vincent Lecavalier, Jose Theodore, Ed Jovanovski, Wade Redden, Zdeno Chara, Sergei Samsonov, Jarome Iginla, Marty Turco, Ryan Smyth, Patrick Elias, Evgeni Nabokov, Chris Pronger and Patrick Marleau could all be available to the highest bidder next summer if they don't sign long-term deals in the interim -- a younger and more talented group than this year's list.

You can scratch Iginla and Pronger off that list

An offer sheet...

So are we going to get rid of more draft picks because of this???? I really hope this is a "sign & trade" type thing, instead of straight up offering another teams RFA a contract.

So no one learned from the Federov fiasco?

The Wings can't afford to lose him, even for a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (what they'd get if he signed for $4 million a year). I think they'd match and dump Robert Lang's $3.8 million somewhere. But Ken Holland can't be happy right now.

Hm...

Well, if true, it's an interesting move at least. I'm not convinced that Zetterberg is the sort of franchise young player the Leafs need, so the cost may be too high in terms of cap room and picks*.

Still, it's at least possible that one of the new realities of the CBA is that targetting other teams' RFAs is now viable. If the Leafs are the first team to figure this out, great. But it sounds more like a hail mary from a beaten squad to me.

*Note that, if the Leafs do get him, I reserve the right to suddenly delude myself into thinking he's the next Gretzky.

Please tell me $4 million is just a number you threw out there and not what people actually think he's worth.

("people" meaning NHL cognoscenti, not necessarily you specifically :) )

Yeah, just using that to illustrate that they could go that high and the draft pick compensation still wouldn't be that bad.

Has the compensation changed with the new CBA? Either way, could someone point me in the direction of how the compensation breaksdown?

my wife left a printout on my desk from some Flyers page where they were going crazy over foppa.

was thinking of getting her a King's Roenick jersey for Christmas, but now she's getting nothing.

fuck the new CBA.
:p

Someone on Eck's board just said the Leafs might be after Datsyuk as well... he said it's on HTR now. Does anyone know what HTR stands for?

Found it:


Looks to me as if the Leafs would be screwed if they signed him...

you guys think the LA Kings made a good trade to get Jeremy Roenick?

what there chance to get Zigmund Palffy to sign with them?

No, that's the old compensation. It's changed. Trying to find a link...

I think it was a good risk. Seems like they gave up very little, and I still think Roenick is a valuable player.

Here's the new one:

Up to $660,000 - No compensation
$660,000 to $1 million - One 3rd round draft pick
$1 to $2 million - One second round pick
$2 to $3 million - One 1st and one 3rd round pick
$3 to $4 million - One 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd round pick
$4 to $5 million - Two 1sts, one 2nd and one 3rd round pick
Over $5 million - Four 1st round picks

----

Do the picks have to come from the next draft?

Right, that's it. Big difference.

Yeah, as far as I know, it has to be the next one. Not sure what happens if a team has traded that pick already.

Culled from TSN, here is the list of *restricted* FAs that have yet to sign:

Nash, Heatley, Kovalchuck, Thornton, Samsonov, Hejduk (I don't think he's signed yet), Datsyuk, Luongo, Hossa, Spezza, Havlat, Lecavalier, St. Louis.

Now, obviously, there's is almost zero chance that Nash, Heatley, Kovalchuck, or Lecavalier go anywhere. But Boston, Colorado, Florida, Detroit, and Ottawa are all sitting on pretty hefty payrolls already and/or have committed quite a bit of money long-term to UFAs this week. I wonder if some teams are intentionally sitting back and waiting until the dust clears this week so that they can make RFA offers they know the current teams can't match, be it this year or beyond.

edit: This list is obviously not comprehensive...just the biggest names

I love it that JR is in LA... not for hockey reasons.

http://www.hockeytraderumors.com/

I think I'm in the minority, but I personally think Roenick is a perfect fit for the team (and vise versa). The guy sure can come off like a dumbass, but he's a great leader for all the good young players the Kings have. It gives Demitra someone else to do all the heavy lifting (on and off the ice). And, it gives the Kings a marketable star. Meanwhile, JR is going to love being THE guy in LA.

and the Kings still have a decent amount of room under the cap to add someone like Palffy (although I assume there's some competition for him)

Agreed with all of that. Roenick's a great fit there, and they've got a nice mix of veterans and good young guys. If the goaltending holds up, they're a playoff team.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS IDIOT? :confused:
Eric Lindros a heart-warming story?

guh

and in a completely unrelated tangent, any teams rolling out new unis this year?

Hrmmm....

Well, you know the Blackhawks. They change like every other year ;)

SI

The post was not written by eklund, it was a "column" by a Toronto based radio guy.

I think the picks need to be the actual own picks of the team. So the compensation picks need to be originally from the team that made the offer sheet signing, not picks they have acquired from other teams. Atleast this is how it was in the old CBA IMO.

oops.

well, then, what the fuck is wrong with THAT idiot?

I believe RBK has acquired the licenses for the entire NHL and new uniforms are being prepared for every team. The Flames President talked about it yesterday. They're going over the design right now. Logos won't change but the jerseys are supposed to be "sleeker" or whatever.

I've also heard that Buffalo might be going back to the Blue & Gold. I'm not sure if I've posted the following link or not (been bouncing between too many hockey forums...)
http://www.celsiusdesign.net/sabres/index.html

Howard Berger, he's with the FAN590, the Leafs reporter...usually very negative....when he's on the radio, ill listen, but i hate how negative he is

Yeah, Berger hates everything the Leafs do. If he think Lindros is heart-warming, he must have inside information that he's signing elsewhere and is just setting up for tomorrow's hatchet job.

Domi has resigned with the Leafs tonight.

2 years/ 2.5 total i think

Yeah.

Probably a slight overpay, but not a bad deal. Two years is about right.

It will be fun to watch the same writers who hacked up Ferguson for his lack of loyalty to Roberts/Niewendyk turn around and hack him again for overpaying Domi.

you were right about your earlier comments...whatever JFJ does, he wont win with the media here....it gets annoying after a while

I remember talk about them tapering the jerseys, and maybe using some "slicker" materials, which sounded rather gay to me, but oh well, let's see.

those Buffalo concepts look cool (except for that putrid Nashvillesque gold for the alternates). Personally, I like both the old blue and gold jerseys AND the new black and red style. I have one of the current ones, and the old blue ones is on my wish list.

To clear up the Devils mess, it's McGillis for $1.1mil (a steal), Rafalski $4.2mil, and Malakhov $3.6mil (a total ripoff).

According to TSN, at least.

~rpi-fan

the devs also still have matvichuk, which i forgot. so...with hale and martin, assuming stevens comes back, there is certainly strength in numbers at least.

well, that makes a little more sense at least.

Better hope Matty finds his game again. He was in a slump there for a while.

espn says mcgillis is making 2.2 per year, for a 2 year deal. so, 2/4.4 overall.

Columbus filled another need today, picking up G Martin Prusek, who was the backup in Ottawa, for a 1 yr, $625,000 deal. Finally, a respectable backup goalie that can give Denis some games off. On top of that, two great defencemen gives me a lot of hope for this team in the upcoming season. I think MacLean filled all the needs without breaking the bank, and being able to fit in Nash long term into the cap.

I'm hopin this is the year that the team breaks out and finally makes the playoffs.

I was at the game where his lung collapsed a couple years ago (it was in Nashville). I don't know why I posted that.

coincidentally, I was at the game in Boston when he got the concussion that essentially knocked him out of Philadelphia. That was heart-warming to say the least!

Can you say Cox and Simmons?

Glad to see Domi re-signed...

Now Eklund is saying the Leafs are shopping Belfour... something tells me if there are any takers, I doubt there will be many, they ain't going to get squat in return.

That doesn't make any sense. Who would want a goalie with a big contract who probably has one year left, even if he can still play at an all-star level? It would have to be a team with a "win now" mentality but without a top goalie, and there aren't many of those. In fact, the only one I can think of is Tampa Bay if Khabi leaves.

I will preface this by saying that, as a Leaf fan, I have absolutely zero expectation that this will happen. That said, where there's smoke, there's often fire, and while the "rumour" as reported is so one-sided as to favour the Leafs that there is almost certainly no chance it has any basis in reality, there is a lot of chatter apparently about some kind of a 3-way deal involving Toronto, Boston, and Chicago. (A moderator at HFBoards confirmed it was reported on ESPN radio in Chicago but was ultimately shouted down by others, so I don't know if it was or not.)

The gist of the rumour had Thornton in Toronto (shocking, I know), Belfour in Chicago, Daze in Boston, and a bunch of other stuff from Toronto thrown in (couple of firsts, Stajan and/or Steen, etc.). Last I heard, the Hawks were still trying desperately to land Khabibulin, so one would assume that if they get him, all bets are off (if they aren't already).

At any rate, that might be where some of the Belfour rumours are coming from.

/not buying any of it. *shurg*

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?id=132491

While I like Kariya, I am not sure how well he fits in right now, since we really need a top line center, not a winger...