Quote:
Originally Posted by RaiderDoug
I might be totally off my rocker here, but I want this guy signed. At all costs. Literally.
I don't know if I'd give him an Ovechkin deal, but really, 6 mil - i'd have no problem with it. 7? Maybe a little, at first.
He's gone above Suter in priorty for me. Lets face it, Suter will be a #2 D-man as long as Weber's here. If he bolts for 7 mil in Detroit, so be it.
We've never had a guy like Radulov here. Maybe Kariya his first season. Every time he's on the ice he does something good.
Sign Rads. Resign the Brothers Kostitsyn - you've got as dangerous a top 6 as anyone in the NHL outside of Pittsburgh. With depth too.
Offer Suter fair money - if he stays- great! If he goes to Detroit for a Brinks truck, so be it. Signing the forwards above makes one of the guys like Smith/Wilson expendable - send one of them off for a similar young D-man - maybe a Bogosian (or your favorite young d-man here).
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Through these first 5 games I agree with you. I remember telling people that if he plays well in his time here and makes a big difference I have no problem giving him 6 mil/year or potentially even more than that. Now I'm of the mindset though that at this rate we do in fact need to bring him back at any reasonable cost. Concerns about his game fitting here? Gone. Concerns about being accepted and fitting in? Gone. Concerns about ruining team chemistry? Long gone. He is looking like a dynamic team player. As mentioned above, he bolted straight for AK after his goal because of the great pass by him. Then after that he skates by the bench and basically shouts at Pekka to keep it up and bring it home for us.
This isn't the same guy we had before. He is looking incredibly mature and team-oriented and, as was also mentioned before, he makes things happen every time he's on the ice. They don't often equate to goals (then again nothing in this game "often equates to goals") but he just has the knack of being where he needs to be, putting his stick is a good place, making good decisions and knowing where guys are going to be. It amazes me that not only does he do this, but he's doing it right away with not much time to blend in with the current guys on the team. The pass he made to Halischuk for the goal against Winnipeg was crazy to me. In his second NHL game in 4 years he makes a no-look pass on a breakout to a guy who isn't even on his line like it was no big deal at all and he had been linemates with him all year. It's possible that was the first time Rads and Hali had ever been skating next to each other in their lives and Rads knew where he was going to be without even looking. We've never had a guy capable of things like this.....in the prime of his career......who seems to enjoy playing for us.
Who knows how the season and playoffs will unfold, but the way it looks now we definitely need to lock him up and he has taken priority over Suter in my mind too.