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Blues re-sign Brian Elliott to two-year contract extension
Great signing! Low risk, high reward deal... Sucks for Bishop though. He was already really disappointed at the beginning of the season when the Blues elected to go wth Elliott.
Elliott, and Halak for that matter, look great because they're playing behind a great team with a solid, defensively sound system. As long as the team performs well in front of them, they'll make any decent goalie look really good. Same thing happened with Bryzgalov and now Mike Smith in Phoenix. It's not stupid to keep a goalie who performs well in your system...it's stupid to pay someone big money who's obviously a product of the system that brought him success. I wouldn't worry about the Blues resigning him...I'd have worried about some other team signing him and expecting the same level of success.
Not saying it would, but any chance this opens the ability to trade Halak?
Just curious.
Seems ridiculously unlikely. The combined cap hit for Halak/Elliott is about the same as a single starting tender for a lot of the other teams in the league. No reason to trade either of them.
The critics of the signing are ignoring the fact that the Blues organization is dealing with a known commodity. They know how hard Elliott works, how he is in the locker room, as a teammate, etc. Whenever you sign a guy as a free agent, there is a risk of being unpleasantly surprised at intangibles.
The guy signed a 2-way contract, battled for the backup job and won it in the preseason, and has played better than anyone would have predicted. I really don't see the downside. They're not projecting him as a starter, and they're not investing much money....but they are rewarding him a little bit. Dude deserves it.
Its a win/win signing. I think it says a lot about the Blues that Elliott would prefer to take this guaranteed money and probable back-up position, than to wait until next year and try for a starter job/money elsewhere.
The critics of the signing are ignoring the fact that the Blues organization is dealing with a known commodity. They know how hard Elliott works, how he is in the locker room, as a teammate, etc. Whenever you sign a guy as a free agent, there is a risk of being unpleasantly surprised at intangibles.
The guy signed a 2-way contract, battled for the backup job and won it in the preseason, and has played better than anyone would have predicted. I really don't see the downside. They're not projecting him as a starter, and they're not investing much money....but they are rewarding him a little bit. Dude deserves it.
Its a win/win signing. I think it says a lot about the Blues that Elliott would prefer to take this guaranteed money and probable back-up position, than to wait until next year and try for a starter job/money elsewhere.
At the end of the day the Blues are "risking" about 1.8 over two years. I think that's a great bet for a guy who has shown the improvement that Elliot has. If he regresses back to being an average backup... so what? It's not a big deal. This contract has the chance to be a steal, that one mod who hates the signing refuses to entertain the idea that perhaps Elliot can hang onto some of this success.
Sounds like the people who think it's a bad idea don't actually watch him play. Keep looking at stat sheets and trying to guilt trip us for guys who have put up 8 shutouts just past the midway point of the season. Considering how overpaid some of the starters in the league are right now this is never going to be a bad signing by comparison.
I don't think the Blues want to trade Bishop, but I think they probably would if he goes to ask for a trade, which is certainly plausible now.
Halak is playing great and it's good that he has someone to push him, but in no way does this change things for Halak. It just rewards the guy who had to claw for a job without no promises at all and earned every bit of it.
Bishop probably looks for another organization. He's probably ready to be an NHL back-up somewhere. I'm sure NJ, Tampa and other clubs will be scouting a lot of Peoria games down the stretch.
Solid move by the Blues. Elliott's performed quite well for them so far.
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Exhibit A as to how hockey doesn't matter on ESPN:
Last night an ESPN program was discussing how the Detroit Pistons needed a hero citing the heroes on the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions and no mention of the Detroit Red Wings. All this despite the Red Wings probably being the most succesful team in Detroit right now.
Lol at the people saying this is a bad signing. He has played great and at under 2 mil per is a steal. The Blues have two solid goalies that combined equal many other teams starting goalie salary. We finally after a couple decades have goal tending we can depend on.
