[ad_1]
It was a fair question. Or so I thought.
I was talking to the GM of an NHL team a few years back. Free agency was weeks away, and his team happened to have a ton of cap space.
“So,” I asked. “Thinking you’ll make a big splash?”
The GM laughed. What was so funny?
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You can’t say Zdeno Chara. Name me one other major UFA signing during the salary cap era that actually worked.”
I paused. I panicked. He cut me off before I could come up with Marian Hossa.
“You see? It’s a fool’s errand.”
He was right … to a point. In free agency, especially until the past couple seasons, teams tend to pay players for what they’ve done, just as they exit their primes, instead of for what they’re going to do during their decline years. The system is flawed. Almost every major UFA is past his peak or nearing its end by the time he reaches his open-market years. So it is, indeed, hard to win big on a fat UFA contract.
That said, it’s more common than the aforementioned GM would have us believe. We’ve seen a few home-run signings during the salary-cap era. Which are the best ones?
Honorable mentions: Brian Rafalski, 2007 (DET), Mike Smith, 2011 (ARI), Joe Pavelski, 2019
(DAL)
5. Sergei Gonchar, 2005, Pittsburgh Penguins
5 years, $5,000,000
AAV
When Gonchar went to market in 2005, a.k.a the first salary-cap offseason, a.k.a. the Wild West, he was already 31 and 10 years into an excellent NHL career. Over the previous five seasons, he led all NHL defensemen in goals and was second only to Nicklas Lidstrom in points.
So it was a coup when the Penguins, riding the high of landing a kid named Sidney Crosby in the NHL Draft lottery, scooped Gonchar. He was the rare UFA who didn’t decline in his early to mid 30s. In his second season with the Pens, he equaled his career high with 67 points and finished seventh in Norris Trophy voting. In his third season, he finished fourth in Norris voting. He played monstrous minutes on the 2007-08 Pens squad that lost in the Stanley Cup Final and the team that won the Cup in 2008-09. The Pens likely don’t hoist the chalice without Gonchar, whose résumé should earn him Hall of Fame consideration in years to come.
[ad_2]
Source link
