Mostly due to team bias
Besides, Bryz is too lovable.
But seriously, Bryzgalov is still in the prime of his career. He'll be alright long term. His skills are still all there, he's having a bad season.
Richards is past his prime. He's still pretty good but probably not even worth his cap hit these next few years where he will still be producing. That contract will look dreadful in 3 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DevilChuk
This isn't NHL12. You don't just hit your prime and leave your prime based on a number.
Seriously? You don't think players can have different primes? Not even a player and a goaltender?
Richards' skill is declining. Bryzgalov's isn't. If you don't see how that is possible (you can disagree with that assessment, thats fine) even though they are both the same age, you play too much video games.
Dude, I wish I had time for video games. I am still on NHL 10! I know different players have different primes. These are elite players that we are talking about here. How can you say after 66 games in a Rags uni that Richards skill is diminishing? Because his stats are a little worse? Bryz's are worse than they have been too.
Dude, I wish I had time for video games. I am still on NHL 10! I know different players have different primes. These are elite players that we are talking about here. How can you say after 66 games in a Rags uni that Richards skill is diminishing? Because his stats are a little worse? Bryz's are worse than they have been too.
Watching the games mostly. Not stat wise.
Richards looks like a shell of his former self. Bryzgalov, to me, looks like he's having more of a bad season since he still does show his dominance in flashes.
End of the day, Bryzgalov at worst this year has been an average goaltender. That's $5.6 for a position that normally gets probably around $3-4 million for an average goalie.
Richards has been playing mostly 3rd line this season. That's $6.6 for a position that normally gets no more than $2-3 million.
I wonder why every year there are a few long year contracts...
All i know the most of them are terrible examples for their franchises and also for the players:
Islanders: Yashin and DiPietro
Flyers: Pronger and Bryzgalov
Rangers: Redden, Gomez and Drury
Vancouver: Luongo
New Jersey: Kovalchuk
Buffalo: Leino and Erhoff
Washington: Ovechkin and Backstrom
I don´t know one long contract the gm would make another time.... So why all of them make it again and again.
Sure a few good contracts exists:
Keith in Chicago or Zetterberg in Detroit, but most of them are not worth the money...
Also Carter and Richards are bad examples for both sides...
And pls don´t defend single players here, i don´t want to throw anyone under the bus (KOvalchuk, Bryz etc.) I only want to discuss if the risk is worth it....
What´s your opinion?
Where's the cutoff? In other words, how long does the contract have to be to be a long contract?
Richards looks like a shell of his former self. Bryzgalov, to me, looks like he's having more of a bad season since he still does show his dominance in flashes.
End of the day, Bryzgalov at worst this year has been an average goaltender. That's $5.6 for a position that normally gets probably around $3-4 million for an average goalie.
Richards has been playing mostly 3rd line this season. That's $6.6 for a position that normally gets no more than $2-3 million.
Richards has been playing 3rd line? So who's the 2nd line center?
He's been playing top 6 all season except one game where he started on the 4th line, but he went on to score the game winner in OT.
Richards looks like a shell of his former self. Bryzgalov, to me, looks like he's having more of a bad season since he still does show his dominance in flashes.
What games are you watching?
Richards has been just fine in the games I've seen him. A bit of a misfit tho, since he doesn't seem to mesh well with some of the big guns in NYR (on ice that is)
Still the highest scoring center on a defensive team.. And a clutch guy.. Prolly scores more GWGs than any forward on the roster, Cally might be close.
3rd liners don't usually get 20+ TOI on a #1 eastern team.
Giving guaranteed long term contracts of ~10 years just seems like a plain bad idea to me. Ideally I'd like to see a cap on contract length. Maybe 7 years?
Giving guaranteed long term contracts of ~10 years just seems like a plain bad idea to me. Ideally I'd like to see a cap on contract length. Maybe 7 years?
Makes sense. I think I've heard somewhere that 7 years is the longest they can be insured. Can anybody confirm or correct me on that?
I wonder why every year there are a few long year contracts...
All i know the most of them are terrible examples for their franchises and also for the players:
Islanders: Yashin and DiPietro
Flyers: Pronger and Bryzgalov
Rangers: Redden, Gomez and Drury
Vancouver: Luongo
New Jersey: Kovalchuk
Buffalo: Leino and Erhoff
Washington: Ovechkin and Backstrom
I don´t know one long contract the gm would make another time.... So why all of them make it again and again.
Sure a few good contracts exists:
Keith in Chicago or Zetterberg in Detroit, but most of them are not worth the money...
Also Carter and Richards are bad examples for both sides...
And pls don´t defend single players here, i don´t want to throw anyone under the bus (KOvalchuk, Bryz etc.) I only want to discuss if the risk is worth it....
What´s your opinion?
Because really long contracts are the only way to bring down the cap hit. Or if it's a UFA bidding war, the player is going to want to go where he has the most security hence teams tend to keep adding years on the contract to outbid each other.
Kovalchuk has a bad contract? Huh? It may end up being toxic in 10 years, but right now his cap hit is a bargain, and he is the team MVP. He's even gotten Hart trophy talk(not that he has a chance to win it). Another one that has been really good is Hossa, at that cap hit with his production, I'd take it any day.
The verdict on these deals won't be known until much, much closer to the end of these deals.
If Luongo turns out to be playing at a high level when he's 37, 38, 39...the contract may very well be worth it. Same thing with Ehrhoff, Bryzgalov, Richards, etc.
Also, what do you consider a "long-term" contract? 6 years (such as Leino and Redden) I'm not sure really cut it--those were bad contracts for completely different reasons (namely the players were vastly overpaid), though Leino still has 5 years to make good on his deal. Pronger's deal was more stupid because Holmgren didn't understand the 35+ clause than anything.
Then there are deals like Kipprusoff (6 year deal), Chara (7 year deal), etc where it has been worth it. Can Ward has a 6 year deal, and so far there isn't much a problem with it. And I'm sure there are more, I just stopped going through CapGeek at Carolina.
More than anything, it depends on who you give it to.
They're high risk/high reward. There's the potential to get a significant cap hit discount on a player, but management needs faith that the player will be durable and reliable. It can absolutely be worth it; Richards/Carter contracts in Philly were a great example of guys playing well above their pay grade.
Kovalchuk has a bad contract? Huh? It may end up being toxic in 10 years, but right now his cap hit is a bargain, and he is the team MVP.
At the rate at which the salary cap is increasing[1], in 10 years the cap will be about 100million. So even though he won't be playing as well as he is now, his relative cap hit will be much lower (it would be similar a 4.2mil cap hit this season)
I have a feeling that a 38 year old Kovalchuk playing in todays game would be worth about 4mil.
So I think long term contracts can actually wind up working out well for a team, if you make the assumption that the salary cap will increase every year (which it has).
Even though Kovalchuk had a bad year last year, it was still above average for most of the players in the NHL. His cap hit is only 6.667 mil. I can think of at least one player with a bigger cap hit that is not producing even 10th as much as him... Scott Gomez 7.357 mil cap hit...
Which would I rather have?
Finding one player that did worse that costed more isn't proof that his contract is good. Although not looking at his stats he has been doing pretty good this year. I think the main issue is when they give players long contracts that extend past 40 years of age.
I would like to see a list of every long term contract signed 7 yrs and beyond...
You'll be hard pressed to find that they've been great investments... but time will tell...
Off the top of my head, and reading thru here, we have...
Yashin
Dipietro
Lecavalier
Campbell
Keith
Hossa
Luongo
Pronger
Bryzgalov
Fransen
Zetterberg
Ovechkin
Backstrom
Ehrhoff
M.Richard
B.Richards
Carter
Gomez
Kovy
Fleury
I think it's pretty clear that they just are not good ideas. Many are out performing their cap hits right now sure... but there is a the great unknown of if they end up worth it at the end of the day...
I would like to see a list of every long term contract signed 7 yrs and beyond...
You'll be hard pressed to find that they've been great investments... but time will tell...
Off the top of my head, and reading thru here, we have...
Yashin
Dipietro
Lecavalier
Campbell
Keith
Hossa
Luongo
Pronger
Bryzgalov
Fransen
Zetterberg
Ovechkin
Backstrom
Ehrhoff
M.Richard
B.Richards
Carter
Gomez
Kovy
Fleury
I think it's pretty clear that they just are not good ideas. Many are out performing their cap hits right now sure... but there is a the great unknown of if they end up worth it at the end of the day...
Many are looking flat out disastrous however.
the Hossa contract is worth it no matter how he plays the rest of his career because the Hawks got a cup out of it
You talk about players "blablabla his cap hit is still $6.6M when he's 39". So? Almost all players don't play any further than when their quality drops to under 80 % of their peak quality. I mean it's unusual to see players play until they are 40, and when they are, it's like Jagr or Selänne - even then they are among the top15 on their position in the league. If those guys had signed a Kovalchuk-like contract 12 years ago, sure their cap hit would be $6.6M right now, but their playing quality isn't especially far under that value.
And when Kovalchuk is 39, he'll either produce 30+30 for his cap hit, while being paid something like $1,000,000. Or he'll quit before that age. Either way the only bad thing with a Kovalchuk-like contract is the cap hit, and I don't think that many teams could spend that much over the cap anyway.
