Global warming drives her to drink.
Traffic drives her to drink.
The lockout drives her to drink.
Losing at fantasy football drives her to drink.
Winning at fantasy football drives her to drink.
I'm probably somewhere in the low 300's of what drives her to drink.
Good signing of Fowler. Good price, and if there winds up being a salary rollback it'll be a ridiculous price.
Actually, after this signing, I feel like watching the 2011 playoff series against Nashville. Fowler was simply incredible in that series, especially for a 19 YO rookie.
Surprisingly cheap. Very slightly more than he's worth now, but the contract won't even start for another year. By that time he will probably be worth 4,000,000 dollars. So great contract.
OTH (Debbie Downer mode), it's not highway robbery like Carlson's contract, which has better term, value, and risk.
I think this continues the pattern. Murray does buy into the whole young player speculative contract thing. He's done it a number of times now. Sbisa, Cogliano, Fowler, the 1-way extra year messes. Contracts like these can be risky. You gamble right and you get a bargain. You gamble wrong and you get an albatross. It depends on how much you trust Murray to guess right.
They took a 24% rollback in 2004. When the first paycheck doesn't come, we'll see how committed the players are at holding the line.
In 2004 they weren't coming off a prior lockout. More specifically, in 2004, the players weren't being asked yet again to bear the cost of the owners idiotically breaking their own supposedly "certain" system. There is almost no incentive for the players to grant similar concessions to the owners this time, because it's clear "lockout" has become synonymous with "mulligan" to the owners.
In 2004 they weren't coming off a prior lockout. More specifically, in 2004, the players weren't being asked yet again to bear the cost of the owners idiotically breaking their own supposedly "certain" system. There is almost no incentive for the players to grant similar concessions to the owners this time, because it's clear "lockout" has become synonymous with "mulligan" to the owners.
The owners aren't breaking the system, the record revenues in Toronto, Montreal and New York are. The cap median (and thus floor) are based off total revenues, and the mean revenue is skewed heavily upwards compared to the median by those three teams. The lower half of the league is still being forced to spend 60-70% of their revenues on player costs because of the cap, while Toronto spends maybe 30% of theirs, and the average player's salary has doubled.
And the incentive to roll back salary is that the geniuses will never make up the money they lose in a lockout. Ever. With an average NHL career of 4 years, that's a lower loss than most of them are going to take sticking it to the owners, and the longer the lockout goes, and the lower revenue goes when the NHL returns, the more that comes out of their salary through escrow when play resumes.
The only way a lockout occurs is if more teams find it financially advantageous to not play a season than to play a season. The fact that the last CBA had unintended/unforeseen consequences doesn't mean the players should get a "win" this time just because they "lost" last time, when the financials show the players did extremely well with their "loss".
Pronman has Fowler ranked 11th on his top 50 players under 23. I just know if this ends up on the main board everyone's gonna be like, "Fowler?!? But but but...+/-! CORSI!"
Well, despite his growing pains(in part attributed to being asked to do so much so early), Fowler is an exceptional talent. World class skater, terrific hands, an underrated shot, and a high hockey IQ. He's got poise, while still showing a great deal of raw potential still untapped. The only young defensemen I would, for sure, take ahead of Fowler are OEL, Pietrangelo, Doughty(this one is a bit iffy, considering he has shown motivational issues in the past), and Karlsson. If he misses his potential, it won't be because of any lack of talent, but something else.
Pronman has Fowler ranked 11th on his top 50 players under 23. I just know if this ends up on the main board everyone's gonna be like, "Fowler?!? But but but...+/-! CORSI!"
Fowler actually had a great corsi last season. If you look at all of the advanced stats they all give a pretty good indication of how much Fowler actually improved defensively from his first to second season.
Fowler, Beauchemin and Lydman did pretty much all of the heavy lifting last season while Visnovsky and Sbisa were playing some very easy minutes.
