Richards sweepstakes over before it starts
No word on terms, no word on structure, no word on anything but the news reported by WFLA Newschannel 8 late last night and mirrored in the Tampa Tribune is that Pat Morris and Jay Feaster have hammered out a new contract for Brad.
More details as they come to light.
Update: Thank you TSN. $39 million dollar deal over five years. Whoa.
This is something that can be looked like as handcuffing the franchise financially– even if it locks up the teams best player. Unlike the Lecavalier deal last year, I do believe the money is wisely invested in Brad who is indeed the team’s franchise player (while Lecavalier gets all the talk and press). Between Brad, Vinny and Martin St. Louis, half the cap (projected cap) $19.1 million is invested in three players. Meanwhile — Ruslan Fedotenko is a restricted free agent, Pavel Kubina (one of the few veterans left on the Lightning defense) is an Unrestricted free agent..
Update #2: The Lightning’s payroll tracker from TSN can be found here. 13 players under contract with only 12 of them playing (the 13th man and his 625K cap hit is Dave Andreychuk). They stand with a $33.327 million cap hit as of right now.
The Lightning’s complete Free Agent list (both RFA’s and UFA’s) can be found here along with the free agents of every other team in the NHL.
Most of the lower line players — Ryan Craig, Evgeny Artyuhkin, Martin Cibak and Dmitry Afanasenkov — are restricted free agents. It’ll be interesting to see if any movement is made to bring back players who were overseas this past year (Nikita Alexeev, Eric Perrin and UFA Shane Willis) or if costs will dictate their further exile from the Lightning. Willis is a UFA and Perrin is group IV. Only Alexeev, who played for Avasgaard Omsk last season, is an RFA.
Update #3: Just wanted to repost the numbers that are being passed around out there on the Internet right now with regards to what Brad’s accomplished (and his value to the team because of it):
- He is the only player in franchise history to post five consecutive 60-point seasons and three consecutive 70-point seasons
- He has missed only two games in his first five seasons*
- He ranks fifth in team history with 107 goals
- He ranks ninth in the NHL in points during the past five seasons (368), first on the Lightning and among players 26 or younger
- Since the 2000-01 season, he ranks third in the NHL in assists with 261, trailing only Joe Thornton and Jaromir Jagr
- He ranks second among NHL forwards in games played since 2000-01 (408)
* sidenotes: Richards 2 games missed were while attending the funeral for his grandfather.
Vinny Lecavalier outweighs Brad Richards in tenure and certain statistics but with overall value to the team… Richards wins. I’ve said it before.
But is anyone worth that kind of money? Several fans around the league know that’s not the truth… And several fans of pro-sports in general can attest that large, lump-sum contracts on even the most talented of players can be a drag over time on their respective franchises.
Update #4: One of the evils of the Richards contract being done so quickly with such a high number is that it sets the bar for the upcoming free agent season. We’re not out of May and the bar for a marquee restricted free agent is 7.8 million dollars.
Anyone remember my post last year complaining about players not taking less for the sake of maintaining the competativeness of their teams? That’s perfectly true in this case and any optimism shown by this signing is trying to put a silver lining on a rather cloudy, grey season of Lightning hockey.
I still firmly believe that the reprocussions of the new CBA and teams and players throwing out more big money contracts isn’t going to truly be felt for a few years (maybe next offseason, or the following) when rosters get crunched… If the salary cap ceiling keeps climbing, though, it’s going to take longer for sanity to be reigned in.
And by the way — new poll up here on Boltsmag on the Richards contract.
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May 22nd, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Few players will accept less to ensure the competitiveness of their club, particularly those in their prime like Richards.
Don’t be too harsh on him, however. The Bolts were willing to fork out that money to him, as well as last year’s flinch big-money contracts to Lecavalier and St. Louis. I’ve long said that at the end of the day it’s what the team is willing to pay and not what the player is asking for that determines the market.
If he didn’t get that money from the Lightning, he would’ve gotten it from somebody else. Count on it.
Feaster was gonna retain Richards, of that there was no question. You just don’t deal away a Smythe and Byng winner who’s also been your most consistent performer over the past five years.
The problem, of course, was Feaster was scared of another team with lots of cap space and with a reputation for free spending (hello, there, Toronto Maple Leafs) sending Richards a mindblowing offer sheet worth between $8-$9 million per season. That would either force Feaster into paying more than he wanted to retain Richards or letting him walk and collecting five first round picks as compensation.
The new CBA was “supposed” to force teams into controlling their spending, but in the immortal words of Ron White, “you can’t fix stupid”. Most teams will always overpay to retain their best players but then get whalloped elsewhere on their roster when they’re forced to sacrifice depth for talent.
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
From the outside, a Sens fan, Tampa fans better sure hope that this is part of some bigger plan which involves shedding payroll, ie. St. Louis. Got to see the Bolts play in Ottawa 3 times in the playoff and while they weren’t horrible, they also didn’t look like serious Cup contenders. This move has used up the expected cap bump, and the team isn’t any better. Not going to get much help with the defence or goaltending unless some money is spent in those areas, and it isn’t at all clear where that is going to come from. At least we know that the Bolts are out of the Chara/Redden sweepstakes!
May 23rd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Oops. This contract reminds me of the handcuffing the NYI did to themselves with Yashin a few years ago.
We can argue all we want to about the merits of any given player, but that point becomes mute when the team that they play for financially has no room to act as a flexible party. You begin to stand still, as others around you adapt to the changing landscape, and slowly slide towards the bottom with no resources to improve.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:02 am
I understand your point on the big contracts but are NHL contracts guaranteed like in the NBA or MLB, or can players be cut like in the NFL?
it would seem that a big contract handicaps a team only as much as the salary cap rules permit. the ‘Skins have done an excellant job of salary cap management (despite all published reports) since they can hand out big free agents contracts and still keep veteran players. if your GM knows the salary cap rules well enough big contracts such as these should never be a problem.
May 25th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
NHL player contracts are guaranteed and remain effective during its life. The only option a team has in terms of avoiding the cap space hit from a signing mistake is to send the player to the minors, but the team is still on the hook to pay his salary. Even the money used to buy out a contract has to be counted towards the cap. Because the cap was set at $39M assuming revenue of $1.8B, the cap should be at around $48M when revenue returns to the 2003-04 level. On the other hand, it won’t be $48M next season and GMs are not allowed to distribute cap hits unevenly over the life of the contract. Even if you sign a contract that pays a player $1M this season and $9M next season, the cap hit is still $5M each season.