Why don't you first tell me who we are letting go and why?
This notion that the increasing cap will allow us to buy our way out of our mistakes is naive to put it mildly. If the cap goes up 20% every single player out there will be wanting a 20% raise when their contracts expire. Have a look at all our players who's contract are up for renewal at the end of this season, then next season ... if you think a 15 million cap increase means we can keep all our guys and have extra 15 million to spend you're nuts. You are the guy who said that because of the cap increase signing guys will be "no problem" right?
And BTW, not once have I said I don't want to resign Dion. All I'm saying is I don't want to hand a blank cheque to anyone. It's other moves we've made like Clarkson for example that I am critical of.
By the way I never said a cap increase of 15M means we keep all our players and HAVE and extra 15M to spend, if you think that then your reading comprehension is nuts. What I said and still stick by is with what we have now and the cap increase its not impossible to get everyone who is vital to our success signed. ie Bolland(3.5M),Mclement(2M),Phaneuf(7M) = 12.5M.
Next year we have 23M to spend without a cap increase and if what some
hockey people are saying is the cap could rise to as much as 72M next year
then yes I have no doubt we can re-sign our core players and even go after a
good dman as a UFA>
the rest fraser,ranger,raymond, kulemin we have to evaluate to determine if
they are what we need going forward.
RFA's Franson,Reimer,Gardiner will have to take what Nonis offers them
or sit out. its that simple. Nonis holds all the cards with RFA's.
I think that Kulemin will walk next year - probably to the KHL - I'm in the
camp of enough of holding onto UFA's only to not resign them. If they are that important to the team that we keep them on trade deadline day then they should be re-signed. We cannot afford to lose these players that we have developed or signed
and get nothing in return for them.
As far as the cap I stand by my statement that the cap is going up and one thing that Nonis does well is getting his RFA's to sign for what he wants. He will not overpay for a RFA when he holds all the cards but EVERYONE overpays for UFA's.
All GM's have no choice if they believe that the guy they want can bolster the lineup then they always overpay. Last year with the cap going down we saw a lot of
players like raymond sign for less than they are worth BUT if you look at every year before that ALL UFA's signed for more than they were worth. Supply and Demand. Business 101.
thats why I think we wont have problems getting the players we WANT(core players) re-signed under the cap structure. I look at it a little differently than most people. I dont see it as buying our way out of mistakes But I do see it as a
way of determining who we WANT to re-sign that helps us going forward.
I have no problem at the trade deadline of trading
kulemin,raymond,fraser if we feel we cant resign them next year
and they dont fit in our long range plans.
RFA"s i have no problem trading at the trade deadline or at the draft
franson - always going to be a hard signing - he thinks he's worth more than he is
reimer - if asking for #1 money ($4-5M)
gardiner - is redundant with rielly on team BUT only for a HUGE return