July 8, 2007

UFA signings 2007

These are my opinions of the good and bad signing in the past week (or so). Your opinions my vary and I'm not responsible for those. I did not include the "neutral" deals, meaning any deal that is within some reasonable bounds of my expected signing amount.

Good Deals:

  1. I like Preissing and so my opinion here is only slightly biased. I never understood why San Jose felt that Mark Bell would help the team win as well as Preissing does (turns out Bell kind of sucks…). In all three NHL seasons Preissing has not been a negative player and this past year he was +40 tied with Lidstrom and ranked 3rd in the NHL. Now Preissing, didn’t get the 20+ minutes you’d expect from a top defenseman, but he did get 20+ minutes in 2005-2006 with San Jose and did just fine. My numbers have Pressing worth about $5.3M and getting $2.75M is basically 50%. It however doesn’t surprise me the NHL generally underpays small “power play specialists”.
  2. Backstrom is a goalie in his prime and averaged a 93% save percentage in Finland and was able to maintain that in the NHL in the short stint he managed to play for the Wild. In 31 games Backstrom made it obvious he was better than Fernandez. Obviously his lack of NHL experience is affecting his contract, but I’m surprised that he wouldn’t at least try to get a bigger contract from another NHL team.
  3. Goalies are often argued to be under compensated by statistics junkies. Hasek is no exception, at 43 years of age he’s still able to be worth about $5 million, his $2 million dollar salary is a steal, but I’m sure playing for Detroit has some value to Hasek.
  4. O’Donnel accepted a pay cut after a great season with Anaheim. And he just added a cup to his resume. $1.25 million is simply an embarrassment, but I guess this is a statement at how valuable Pronger really is.
  5. $2.25 million for a “0.7 point per game” forward? That’s what Stumpel signed for.

Bad Deals

  1. Drury, the exact opposite situation as Stumpel: a “0.7 point per game” player for $7 million. Why not just sign Stumpel for $7 million instead (just kidding)?
  2. The New York Rangers were also able to sign Gomez for $7.4 million; at least he’s a 0.8 point per game player, 27 and 5’11” (inch taller than Drury).
  3. Handzus – $4 million for 4 years is a bad deal, that’s all…
  4. Sarich - $3.6 million / year. Minus two seasons in a row. For a player who “owns a great point shot” his shooting percentage of 1.9% is an embarrassment. What is Calgary looking for here? Maybe someone wants to explain.
  5. Lang, another “0.7 point per game” forward, getting a big contract of $4 million.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like the Handzus deal. It may be a bit much for a guy coming off an injury filled season or two but if he is healthy he is a great defensive player who has the size to take on the big western conference forwards like Thornton, Iginla, Getzlaf, etc. That said, until the Kings address their goaltending then nothing really matters.

That is quite a bit of money for Sarich but we constantly see teams overpay for defensemen. $5.5 million for Hamrlik? But Sarich is a big strong physical defenseman and Mike Keenan loves big strong physical defensemen. I am not sure I would put this in the horrible deal because he will suit Keenan's style of play quite well.

A couple other bad moves:

Hamrlik as mentioned.

$4.2 million for Hartnell. That's a lot for a 25 goal, 45 point guy.