I was convinced the deals would be grandfathered. When I was told they might not be I remember going "Meh, don't worry about!" And then when I saw the new CBA I had a nice plate of crow that evening. Wasn't bad, but ya know, kinda crowy.
I was worried about it when we signed the deals. I figured Bettman was pissed GMs were so blatantly working around the cap, and how he came down on the Devils solidified that for me. It doesn't surprise me a bit that he would find a way to punish teams for doing it.
Part of why I favor the Franzen deal is that at least their was less money involved.
I'm not sure I agree with that. With the way the game has been trending 25 goals has become a bit more of an achievement & there aren't very many players who get to it these days. In the last full season there were only 59 25+ goal scorers in the NHL, there were 9 24 goal scorers.
In the last full season we had 2 25+ goal scorers, Franzen & Hudler, if you use last season stats & pro-rate them we'd have only had 2 25+ goal scorers. So obviously it's a little bit harder to find the 25 goal scorers these days & it's really only the top line guys that are able to score that many.
The number of 25 goal scorers seems to have been going downhill every year since the last CBA, as more and more obstruction has been allowed to creep back into the game and fewer powerplays appear to be handed out. For an idea of how bad it can get, there's the last year before the 04/05 lockout there was just 42 twenty-five goal scorers.
I'm not a big fan of games that are 2/3 special teams, but I would love to see obstruction permanently cracked down on and eliminated. At the same time, the league doesn't want to see guys get destroyed in corners and behind the goalie by guys who just barrel in unimpeded. I'm hoping we see a total move to no-touch icing and then a hard (and permanent) crackdown on obstruction.