Micklebot
Moderator
- Apr 27, 2010
- 54,165
- 31,368
Nac,if we had a owner that would spend money to help the team...Then we could have other options than just going with the status quo....Is more of where is was going my friend...
Nobody would care about a two year deal to Andy,or a paltry one year left on Burrows deal...For us though even the 1 million 1 year deal will have our owner throwing away picks so as not to pay it...The full cap and some is required to be a player in this league,otherwise you are exactly what we are...A bubble team at times ,or drafting in the lottery in others
The argument to be made is that the budget constraints created pressures that lead to bad decisions;
- Hoping Cowen or Wiercioch would cut it as top 4 Dmen instead of looking for a suitable top 4 Dman in free agency
- Trading for Phaneuf as a way to rid themselves of bad contracts (I still contend that this was actually a pretty savvy move but we lacked the long term commitment to eat the contract with the money saved upfront)
- Dealing away picks to get teams to retain, eat bad contracts, or pay bonuses
- Taking lesser returns on star players to fit everything under the budget (Spezza is a prime example, we probably could have gotten more back if we weren't looking for cost controlled Chiasson and instead were willing to take back a more proven but more expensive guy)
On the flip side, it could be argued that our budget prevented us from making poor decisions too; perhaps if we were a cap team, we'd have signed Clarkson, who we were interested in. Some argue that signing Turris would have been a mistake (remains to be seen).
In the end, good managers make good decisions despite their constraints. I'm not sure what constraints lead to us signing both Anderson and Condon when we did, but to me it really seemed like an unforced error; not that it couldn't have worked out, but we backed ourselves into a corner in the event that it didn't work out (which it didn't). We're basically in a budget version of where the Stars were back when they had Niemi and Lehtonen