Free agency: Goalies shouldn't expect big money shot their way
Is Evgeni Nabokov still a $5 million or $6 million goalie?
How about Marty Turco -- what's a veteran netminder like him worth these days?
You might ask the same questions about Chris Mason, Jose Theodore and Martin Biron, and about more than 20 other goalies who will hit the open market when free agency begins Thursday. No doubt they'll be heading in with dollar signs in their eyes -- all players do -- but chances are many goalies will be rudely awakened by what they find out there.
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| Niemi, who had a salary of $827,000 last season, helped Chicago win the Stanley Cup. (US Presswire) |
For one thing, few teams have big money to throw at free agents anymore, and the glut of similarly talented netminders who are available means they really won't have to.
But what seems more important these days is the changing mindset about the position among some general managers in the wake of this season's two Stanley Cup finalists getting there with inexpensive and in essence no-name goaltending. It's a philosophy the Detroit Red Wings have lived by for years.
"It's one thing if you have one of the five top goaltenders in the league, but otherwise you put your money someplace," said Detroit GM Ken Holland, who has long been an advocate of putting only modest resources into goaltending. "My personal feeling is that there's not much difference between the sixth- and 20th-best goalie and a strong defense is a great equalizer."
Or a strong offense.
The Chicago Blackhawks had both and were able to win the Stanley Cup with rookie Antti Niemi, who was being paid only $827,000. Meanwhile, midseason waiver pickup Michael Leighton took the Philadelphia Flyers to Game 6 on a $600,000 salary. And San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson alluded to those performances last week when he announced Nabokov would not be offered a new contract.
"If you look at the trends in this league the last four or five years in particular and the dollars that are dedicated to that position, teams are having success with lower-paid goalies," Wilson said. "If you're dedicating $5 [million] or $6 million, that's coming out of somewhere else."
And suddenly that doesn't seem so necessary any more. Conventional wisdom is that you need big-time goaltending to win but what has become more apparent of late is that it doesn't necessarily come from the marquee and highest-paid names. Ryan Miller and Martin Brodeur couldn't take their teams out of the first round this spring. Roberto Luongo came undone in the second. Henrik Lundqvist didn't even get to the playoffs.
Meanwhile, 25-year-old backup Jaroslav Halak stole back-to-back series against powerhouses Washington and Pittsburgh for Montreal, and Boston Bruins rookie Tuukka Rask did the same against Buffalo.
That made it easier for Wilson to part ways with Sharks lifer Nabokov, who much like San Jose, has been a brilliant regular-season performer who falls short in the playoffs. San Jose will put its faith in either 24-year-old Thomas Greiss or 22-year-old Alex Stalock and possibly a veteran goalie from the free-agency market.
"The goaltending market is very deep," Wilson said. "There's lots of goalies that are out there."
Too bad for them.
Flaming out
Spring cleaning efforts are in full force around the league as teams flood the waiver wires with players they want to get rid of before free agency begins. Like Ales Kotalik.
The Calgary Flames added him to their list of dumps, only a few months after they took Kotalik and his bad contract off the Rangers' hands to get rid of Olli Jokinen. The Flames had no more use for Jokinen, but the team would have been out of his contract when it expired after the season. Instead, GM Darryl Sutter made like a riverboat gambler trying to get his underachieving team into the playoffs and traded Jokinen to get Kotalik and disappointing Chris Higgins.
Higgins is unrestricted so he won't cost anything to go away, but if Kotalik clears waivers as expected, Calgary will have to buy him out and pay him out over four years at an annual $1 million cap hit. It's not the first time Sutter has badly mismanaged his budget either.
Icings
• Looks like the career of Jonathan Cheechoo might be over. The Senators put him on waivers after the former Maurice Richard Trophy winner as top goal scorer had only five goals in 61 games last season after being pushed on Ottawa as part of the Dany Heatley trade to San Jose. Cheechoo, never a great skater to begin with, has been unable to regain his speed after a couple of sports hernia surgeries.
• The free-agent market being as thin as it is -- New Jersey's Ilya Kovalchuk is really the only true superstar player available -- means a lot of teams will be looking toward trading, especially when it comes to plugging holes at center. There's not much out there down the middle, but several reports have Boston's Marc Savard waiving his no-trade clause for specific markets, while Philadelphia's Jeff Carter and Ottawa's Jason Spezza are thought to be in play.
• The NHL Players Association invoked an option that will raise the salary cap ceiling to $59.4 million, but a growing number of teams are using their own budgets rather than that limit to set their payroll. The talk around the draft was that anywhere from 15 to 25 teams will practice the art of self restraint this season. The St. Louis Blues are being pressed by owners to stay very close to the $43.4 million cap floor, while usual suspects like Nashville, Florida and Phoenix are working with very sharp pencils. Even Anaheim conceded it won't spend the $6 million bonus Scott Niedermayer gave them when he retired last week. "Budgets, we're going to watch much closer," said Ducks GM Bob Murray.
They said it
"He's a young gentleman whose potential's been untapped, really. Part of it is that I don't think he's been in the greatest place for his development. I think they've always been kind of floundering around. I think the Boston market, the sports market, is going to be tremendous for him." -- Recently re-signed Bruins veteran Mark Recchi on Boston acquisition of Nathan Horton from Florida.
