Quote:
Originally Posted by chimrichalds18
As soon as he inked that deal, I remember thinking “Geez, there’s no way that doesn’t bite us in the ass.” I figured that we were going to get one of Briere, Drury, or Gomez. I didn’t really want any of them, but Briere was the best of that bunch, and I guess it helps that he turned out being the cheapest. He does earn his money in the postseason, but still. Holmgren needs to be shopping that contract (he’s not, I’m sure) every day here on out. Richards+Carter+Briere > $18 million next year. That’s bad, bad news.
The number of quality players we’ve already lost because we don’t have a little extra room (not helped by that $6.5 million chunk) is also depressing.
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Hodge Stove segments have him shopping the deal every year trying to gain flexibility. Terrible terms+no-movement clause=set in stone.
The only thing that similar to the Pronger deal is it front loaded so maybe in year 7 of the deal it will be moveable. This is now year four and while his production has been suspect at times his two solid playoff performances have made it an iffy deal, not a disaster. Hopefully he can give us a couple real good years and it will be a mitigated catastrophe.
My main issues with the signing were two-fold. One, too much competition. Any time there are a whole bunch of teams after a guy on the open market, you wind up overpaying severely. Maybe Chara is an exception, but the jury is still out there IMO. Two, the signing seemed to be some combination of Homer putting his stamp on the team and the ownership wanting a new face and a new type of player coming off a failed experiment staying with the same sort of big team they had prior to the lockout. Symbolic signings are usually bad ones, especially at that kind of $$$$.
