That sums up the Gainey era, he had a policy of never talking contract extensions during the season which put the team in a bad position when it came to resigning players/not losing them for nothing.
Yea, that ended up hurting us quite a bit. He had to discuss and negotiate. If guys like Komisarek and Souray were traded..just those two, if he could he had gotten us proper returns like Gorges+Patches vs Rivet, would have been terrific for us.
That is one thing I find very odd from many teams and managers. I do not know why teams that are in that low PO bracket who really don't have much of a chance at contending for a cup stick with the status quo when trade deadline comes around. In 07-08, it made sense for us not to move a guy like Streit. We needed him and we were one of the top teams in the East. But in 08-09, we had no chance of going anywhere despite still being in a PO bubble spot. Too many issues, the team was collapsing, just pull the plug. We had many upcoming free agents, namely, Koivu-Kovalev-Komisarek. We could have gotten serious returns for those guys.
Teams still operate that way though, they keep their upcoming free agents when they have no chance at winning and end up losing them to free agency. St-Louis started doing it, they traded Stastny this year when they were still on the bubble. I don't know why more managers don't operate this way.
I mean, how the Islanders end up losing Tavares for nothing is a tragedy. I would be so incredibly pissed if I were a fan of them. But we lost Koivu-Kovalev-Komisarek for nothing, which is just as much if not more of a tragedy. The difference between that time and today though is how much the league has shifted towards being much less of a free agent rebuilding one to a drafting/development one.
In some instances, I can get why teams would keep some status quo. The Sabres have made the POs twice in 11 years. They missed them for 7 straight seasons. Say this miss them again this season but the following one, they're a bubble team. They will have Bogosian and Scandella as upcoming free agents. Well, even if those guys don't want to re-sign, I can see why the Sabres would keep them so they can finally get a taste of the POs again. Sometimes keeping guys around to get into the POs is necessary for the rest of the team, I imagine it would be very demoralizing to see your GM throw away players when you're giving it your all to make the POs.
So sometimes it's necessary to move the guys, sometimes it's better to keep them. But too often teams retain players they end up losing.
Gainey also refused to give these long cap circumventing deals. As time showed us, that's how teams managed to build cup winners.