I dont really get it. Are players that Edmonton signed not FA? This includes Souray. He still signed the contract to come to Edmonton.
Give it up people. The Oilers have signed more FA than most if not all the Canadian teams. I know it hurts your "nobody wants to sign in Edmonton" burn but deal with it.
Maybe thats true, but I think that they also get stuck having to overpay or give bad lengths of contracts to complete that deal. Its hard to say from sitting at a desk, without knowing all the conversations that take place but thats my opinion. As mentioned above the nice thing about the Hemsky signing is that its only 2 years, the Oilers arent really tied long term like that of a Souray deal.
It makes him untradeable to a lot of teams who are close to the cap ceiling for 1. Teams considering themselves contenders can't tie up that kind of money on a player whose icetime would be limited and who is likely to miss so many games including playoffs.
2 He has been a terrible example to our prospects for so long with his indifference to defensive zone battles and cherry icetime it's laughable that they would keep him around when we have such great potential franchise players (look how many kids are growing up as Hemsky fans - completely oblivious to anything that happens inside the Oiler blueline)
3 As a second line player, 2nd unit pp guy he's going to be lucky to avg 45 points a season and $5M is a lot for that imo.
4 We need a more physical player than him in our top 6 and Gagner, Hall, Eberle and RNH aren't going anywhere, nor is Smyth likely to.
5 We need a more defensively interested rw'er on Gagner's right side - Sam's not a great 2 way center and he's not going to play a lot of games with Hall and Eberle.
If the Oilers really could have gotten something for him 5 years ago they missed the boat bigtime so part of my reaction is based on that. I can also see Hemsky being the one guy that plays here his whole career and he's just a piss-poor example of what Oiler hockey is all about.
He had a few good games lead up to his contract signing and now he's laughing. Sooner or later the leopard always shows his spots.
LOL, would you have given him up 5 years ago?? Yeah, didn't think so...
And I'd be VERY surprised if he doesn't hit 55-60 points in the next couple years. Even the greatest players can have off-years from time to time you know...
Maybe thats true, but I think that they also get stuck having to overpay or give bad lengths of contracts to complete that deal. Its hard to say from sitting at a desk, without knowing all the conversations that take place but thats my opinion. As mentioned above the nice thing Hemsky signing is that its only 2 years, the Oilers arent really tied long term like that of a Souray deal.
Overpaying for FA is a norm not an exception. Its supply and demand.
Not entirely true. I liked Hemsky as much as everyone else for the first 20 games of his career.
Hemskymania got to me by about the halfway mark of his first season and I drift between indifference and nausea most of the time. If I don't look when he's in the Oiler end it he doesn't bug me at all.
this pretty much explains all anybody needs to know about your opinion on the hemsky signing... you don't like the player, and never have, fair enough... pretty hard to like a signing when you don't like the player being signed
Here are players with comparable salaries to Hemsky (the list was generated by using the compare feature with Huselius in Cap geek).
Some of these are better deals. Others are worse. But what they tend to have in common is length.
Looking at this list, if you attach any premium to Hemsky's term, and factor in the sparse FA class and a potentially large increase in the cap, it would be hard to argue that the deal is not at least in the right ball park.
He would have even been plus one if horcoff scores the empty netter from 5 feet out....
We can both do this all day. And the 2nd assist was pretty important for the goal. Both Hemsky and RNH were important for the way they play developed. No need to criticize just for the sake of criticizing.
I don't personally care if he came out of the game a -1 or a +3, it's just funny how his fans think that he's elite and good defensively, etc. Noone can even comment on why he was already back on the Oilers bench when the goals was scored and the puck hadn't left the Oilers zone yet.
Last edited by Oi'll say!: 02-28-2012 at 06:31 PM.
So at this point in time, looking back over his career, how well could we have done if we would have traded him 8 or 9 years ago?
People here were thinking of him becoming a top 5 player in the league, blah blah blah, imagine the trade value
At the end of the day all he did thru his rfa contract seasons was avg 13 goals, 34 assists, 47 points per season without killing any penalties or providing any intangibles whatsoever.
Todd Marchant got almost as many points per season and all he did was kill penalties and play against the likes of Modano and Sakic.
One day soon I'll go through my list of Hemsky trade proposals and see what comes up. If the database goes back far enough there will be some gold in them thar hills.
Nice to see Hemsky escape a minus 1 on the Jets second goal.
He had a bad turnover in his own zone leading to a 2-1, 20+ seconds of pressure on the Oilers net and 3 or 4 scoring chances and then he got all the way to the Oilers bench (2nd period no less... long change) before the Oilers managed to get the puck out of their own zone.
Cam Barker, Shawn Horcoff or any of the other whipping boys would be getting ripped a new one by all the local experts and stats junkies but Hemsky fans see him as a ppg player tonight because he had a 2nd assist on the pp.
I agree with you guys that it would be really nice if Hemsky could go from being a .5 ppg player when the Oilers were still playing for a playoff spot to a 1ppg player in the games after the Oilers are eliminated from contention... Ooh I'm already eating crow.
Lol yes dedicate your life to hating Ales Hemsky congratulations you're a winner.
^
You have some of the worst logic I have ever seen on these boards
Agreed. I don't know why some "fans" of teams look for every single reason to find faults in players games and only cheer for them to fail. I hate Horcoff more than anyone on the team but I wish him success as long as he's an Oiler.
I don't sit there and wait for a player to be a minus so I can jump on a message board and let the world know that player sucks.
