Okay, anyone up for a lengthy post? If not, keep going. I'll try to take it in numbers to help.
1) Rask was a RFA. How many teams do you think would have beat this deal? Obviously this is pure speculation, but was a 7-year-deal out there at over a 7 million cap hit? I don't know, but it seems very unlikely. So who exactly did the Bruins negotiate against? The answer would seem to be themselves. Rask got the years and the money. What did the Bruins get exactly? This is a total, 100% win for Rask. The Bruins are going to need him to play as a Top 5 goalie in the world for this deal to work out. But that also entails staying healthy for the overwhelming majority of the deal. People forget that sometimes. Cam Ward has been really good....when healthy. How often has that been?
2) He has never played a full season as a number 1 goaltender. I have been harping on this for years, but there is a major, major difference between being the guy for half a season and doing it from Camp to May or June. It isn't Rask's fault they had a stupid lockout (look at that cost certainty we paid four months of the season for!), but I'd feel a lot better about this deal if he had done it even one time.
3) These deals just don't seem to work out. The MAF contract seemed like a good investment at the time. So did the Price deal. Anybody want those?
Goalies are a weird breed. And how often do we see a guy play lights out for a year and then just kinda turn into a JAG (Just Another Guy....in this case, Just Another Goalie). What would Peter Chiarelli offered Rask if he just completed Jose Theodore's 2001-2002 season? 9 million a year?
Rask certainly has all the talent in the world, and he seems to have the competitive drive to be great. But man, goalies are just so hard to predict going forward. For every Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur their are thousands of Jim Carey's (96 Vezina winner) or for a closer to home touch, Pete Peeters (83 Vezina).
4) Not sure I can fault Chiarelli for not signing him to a longer deal last off-season. From everything we read, he wanted a 3-year deal, it was Rask that wanted the 1-year-prove-myself deal.
It worked. Good for him.
5) I understand the argument that if you gave Rask 4 or 5 years, that his next contract could end up costing you 10 million with the inflated cap. To that I say, "So what?"
My problem is the length. It is the length of the contract that will really come back to bite a team in the ass more than the money. Pay Rask 7.5 for 5 instead. Because, at the end of the 5 years, if he is worth it, you pay it. And if he is not, you re glad you don't have a bad contract for three more years.
I have no problem paying a guy that deserves it. And maybe he deserves that much next year, or for the next few years, but beyond that? We just don't know. So let's find out and go from there. If 5 years from now our biggest problem is that Rask is so awesome that we have to pay him way more, guess what? ****ING A Yeah baby! That means he just rocked for 5 years and we can keep him for more.
But what if this deal doesn't work out? Then what? How long does a bad contract destroy your team now?
What if the Islanders had no way to get rid of DiPietro's deal right now? How long would that anchor be weighing on the Islanders? 24 years? If they just did a normal buyout? Remember, no more burying in the minors too.
6) At the end of this, I think Tuukka Rask is really, really, really good. I trust that he won't get fat and lazy with his big deal in place. Would I like to see him do it for a year or two, start-to-finish first? Obviously. But it didn't seem to work out for him or us that way. So I am glad he will be our goalie. You need a goalie in the NHL. The better your goalie, the more room for error your team has.
This is not a ***** about having Tuuukka, just some reasonable concerns about the deal we gave him.
