Friday, July 6, 2012

The State of Free Agency in the NHL


The long term contract, it’s become a staple of the NHL for almost a decade now. This is the way a franchise "beats" the cap ceiling set after the lockout in ‘04/'05. Circumvention of the cap is in fact, “prohibited” within the NHL.  This, in terms, is supposed to ban teams from handing out Mega-Multiyear contracts to the top free agents on the market that make them basically irrelevant deals at the end of their careers i.e- Ilya Kovalchuk.  

The New Jersey Devils were the ones who made the circumvention of the cap relevant in the modern game. They signed Kovalchuk to a 17 year deal which would pay him $102 million throughout.  Problem with this is no one expects a player to be relevant actively playing in the league at the age of 44 (which is when this deal expires).

 Needless to say, the league did not act to kindly to this deal and vetoed it.  New Jersey found a loop hole in the system by tweaking a few numbers, and was able to sign their man to this long term deal. Kovalchuk  will make around $1-$4million/year in the last 4 years of the contract, a far cry from the $11million he’ll be making from 2013-2018 (frontloaded deal).

The trend has continued. With the likes of Roberto Luongo, Sydney Crosby, Jeff Carter, Brad Richards, and most recently the Parise/Suter combo (guess we'll refer them as an item for the next 13 years).  We’ve seen team needs begin to exceed available talent level for market value- Therein lies the problem.

The entire hockey world came to a standstill while they waited for (in the moment “superstars”) Parise and Suter to make up their minds and decide they would sign with the Wild.  Teams with bids and interest in these two players would wait on their decisions before seeing if they would have to go after the remaining free agents. 

When you lose out on the bidding war for the top guys, the domino effect takes place.  Parise/Suter are good players, they’re top level talent, but there is a problem when they receive Sydney Crosby caliber money without nearly having the same resume or skill-set as their counterpart.

Mid level talents like PA Parentau, Olli Jokinen, Jiri Hudler, Brandon Prust, Jaromir Jagr (now at 40 years old), Matt Carle etc… are receiving some seriously UNECESSARY big time money for their services.  This is not a knock against these guys; they are good at what they do.  The problem is there is an alarming lack of talent to match the market demand.  Teams have big holes that need to be filled, and the available talent to do so is scarce, causing the pieces to all fall as they may.

SIDE NOTE: Matt Carle ($5.5 AAV) & Olli Jokinen ($4.5 AAV) will be making more money next season than the likes of; Ryan Callahan, Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski, Claude Giroux, Dustin Brown, Kris Letang, Marc Staal, Dan Girardi, and Ryan McDonagh.

One big talent goes, over-pay the next best player to make sure you fill your teams need, and on down the line until the deals being handed out seem worse and worse. This is what free agency has become.  There are going to be a lot of talks within the new Collective Bargaining Agreement meetings this summer to find ways to nullify and prevent these massive contracts from being handed out. 

Nothing can be done about a team needing a player, and putting a high bid on the best ones that are available.  It’s the nature of the game, and explains how teams get stuck into bad contracts (Wade Redden, Ville Leino, Scott Gomez) these deals handicap teams and set them back competitively in the future.

It truly makes you think;

Are there really any winners or losers in the off-season anymore?  When was the last time the “winner” of free agency translated into a Stanley Cup the following season?  This isn’t baseball, the money is not the motive when it comes to these guys going out and playing through bloodied faces and bad backs.  It’s time the game, from a business standpoint, becomes refocused so it can keep its integrity. 

@NYRCenterIce