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Yzerman, Red Wings and lockouts (Puck Daddy Countdown)

NHL
NHL

(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

  1. Ken Holland

Pretty easy to make fun of the Blue Jackets for having one of the worst and most expensive salary structures in the NHL. Lots of money going to some not very good players. But in some ways I’m starting to think Jarmo Kekalainen has his team better-positioned for the future than does his counterpart in Detroit.

The Red Wings have about $4 million in cap space free, but entered the free agency period with one of the largest spending budgets in the league. Tough to say they’ve handled it any sort of wisely.

There are now a large number of problem contracts on that team, many of which run for years to come. Henrik Zetterberg is signed until he’s 40, and you never know when the wheels will fall off with a guy who’s almost 36. It’s been four seasons since he scored 20-plus. And yeah, 50 points is still a good amount, but he was a negative relative possession player last year and makes almost $6.1 million.

Then there’s the Justin Abdelkader contract, which is terrible for a lot of reasons. And Darren Helm now makes $3.85 million for the next five seasons. Frans Nielsen is a nice player now, but when he’s signed through his age-38 season it’s tough to like a $5.25 million freight.

Nik Kronwall has three more years. Jonathan Ericsson has four. Both earn north of $4 million.

And this is a team that scraped into the playoffs last year. The Wings had fewer wins than Boston.

How does this team cost $68.9 million? Just because you have money to spend doesn’t mean you should spend it on the fifth- or sixth-best free agent. Especially because you only freed up that space in the first place to get a guy who didn’t even come close to signing with you. Yikes.

  1. Labor peace

More than a few contracts signed in this free agency so far are paying their recipients largely in signing bonuses, which makes them far more buyout-proof. Teams can’t buyout their way out of signing bonuses, so those are guys who aren’t going anywhere.

And it’s probably a pretty good indicator that agents, at the very least, are expecting that when the CBA opt-out window opens in 2019 — just three seasons from now — either the NHL or the Player’s Association will take that option.

A less conspiracy-minded person than myself might just see that as insulation from a buyout in general, but the fact that there’s a trend here is reason to be a little worried. This is the NHL after all, and while most U.S. sports leagues can conduct business without disrupting a season these days (even Major League Soccer!) that doesn’t seem to be the hockey way to do things.

(It does seem tempting to think this might be the point at which the players strike rather than letting owners dictate terms, because they’ve given away so much in the last two lockouts. But honestly, I’d just settle for “These are merely some ill-advised contract provisions and there won’t be a work stoppage.” That would be nice for once.)

  1. Twisted logic

People are always going to go out of their way to apologize for the mistakes NHL general managers make. Despite a relatively low bar for success — most GMs are going to be “safe” as long as their teams finish in the top-eight of their conference — the excuse-making related to Peter Chiarelli trading a top-3 left wing in the sport (in exchange for a guy who might only qualify as a top-3 defenseman on many teams in the NHL) was significant.

The best line of thinking on this was espoused by more than one person, and went like this: “Yeah they lost Taylor Hall, but they signed Milan Lucic [an older and worse player] to replace him, got a [No. 3] defenseman, and added Jesse Puljujarvi. So really it’s more like Hall for Larsson, Lucic, and Puljujarvi.”

It’s not like that at all.

That is very dumb.

  1. Overrating speed

To fold things back into the discussion about Ken Holland for a second, does anyone get the feeling that “speed” is becoming the new “size?”

Being fast is a terribly important attribute in any player, insofar as it’s preferable to be fast than than slow. However, merely “being fast” is not a good reason to think a player is worth signing. With respect to Detroit, this accurately described the contract given to Darren Helm. How do you justify giving a guy whose primary skill is speed, with career highs of 15 goals and 33 points (both set when he was 28, in 2014-15), five years at $3.85 million? That’s just a little shy of Wayne Simmonds or Benoit Pouliot money.

More to the point, do you think Holland is aware that speed degrades sharply after a guy turns 30? A Darren Helm who can’t put up points or materially influence possession with all that speed — and man, he’s extremely fast — isn’t likely to start putting up anything close to 30 points if he loses even half a step.

The same can be said of Mikkel Boedker in San Jose. Yeah, he’s fast, and speed is why the Sharks lost the Cup Final. And yeah he averages about 50 points per 82 games over the last three seasons, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a guy who got more power play time in recent years than Boedker, who doesn’t do a lot of damage at 5-on-5. The good news here is he’s only 26, and signed for only four years, but Peter DeBoer isn’t going to be able to carve out the power play minutes for him.

Speed is, again, great to have. But when it’s your main asset, you’d rather have a guy who is a little slower and a lot more skilled than these players, right?

  1. The Panthers

Hard to dislike what the Panthers have done so far this offseason, but I’m starting to have a little bit of existential dread about their bottom line.

It’s great that they’re able to spend a lot more money than they used to, and that young guys and UFAs alike want to play in Sunrise now. But we’re starting to see some very pricy contracts on that club. You can’t just give everyone $4 million or more, can you? Not under this cap environment.

Ignoring 2016-17, for which they have plenty of space and no one left to re-sign, the future is a bit weird for Florida, financially speaking.

They already have 14 players signed for 2017-18, not including guys who will be rookies on ELCs at that time. But almost all of those guys are getting p-a-i-d paid. Between Sasha Barkov, Vince Trochek, Nick Bjugstad, Jussi Jokinen, Reilly Smith, Keith Yandle, Jason Demers, Aaron Ekblad, Roberto Luongo and James Reimer (five forwards, three defensemen, and two goalies), the Panthers will be spending more than $51.5 million against the cap for 10 guys. That’s without the needed contracts for Alex Petrovic and Mark Pysyk (probably not expensive) and Jonathan Huberdeau (very expensive).

A lot of these dollars are being spent somewhat efficiently, but at some point they cancel out the more problematic investments. There’s also flexibility to move a contract or two if they need to, I’m sure. But while the Panthers are a team on the rise, they also need to be cognizant of the pitfalls of just paying everyone whatever they want.

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NHL
  1. The Flames

I still don’t like that Troy Brouwer contract — the revelation that it comes with no-trade protection is even worse — but there’s no doubt they improved significantly this summer. Even without making any changes up front, the dirt-cheap trade for Brian Elliott and the Chad Johnson signing will appreciably shore things up for them.

The Flames have suffered through some awful goaltending over the past several years, and both these guys are well above average. Kent Wilson recently figured out that if they keep up their recent averages, it should save the Flames about 33 goals at 5-on-5 alone. That’s an improvement of as many as 13 points in the standings, though it’s worth noting that both played behind better defensive teams recently than what Calgary has been.

I’d expect slightly more muted results, to be honest, but even if they end up anywhere in that area (let’s say as low as nine points) that’s a huge step forward.

  1. Alex Radulov

Five days later and I still think this is a good contract.

  1. Someone looking for a goalie or a Ryan Callahan

With all the moves Tampa has made in the last week, locking up much of that great core, that has created something of an odd-man-out situation. The Bolts still have a few contracts on the books that you’re starting to think they’d like to get out from under. Callahan, obviously, is dramatically overpaid, and you can get veteran leadership for less than $1 million depending on where you look. Val Filppula is probably a little too pricy as well, though he’s only signed for two more years.

But the big one, of course, is Ben Bishop. The Andrei Vasilevskiy extension all but seals Bishop’s fate as a future “goalie on the market,” which is fine. He’s gonna help someone (Dallas?) a whole hell of a lot. And by leaving the Lightning, he does them a favor too.

The Bolts have almost $13 million in cap space to play with right now, with only Nikita Nesterov, Vladislav Namestnikov, and (most importantly) Nikita Kucherov to lock down. Shouldn’t be a problem. But what happens when Johnson, Palat, and Drouin need extensions next summer and the cap doesn’t move much?

Moves need to be made here. And sooner seems preferable to later here.

On the other hand…

  1. Steve Yzerman

Stared down Jonathan Drouin, didn’t let Steven Stamkos even reach the market, and locked down Victor Hedman for years to come.

No one had a better week than this guy.

(Not ranked this week: Whoever signs Kris Russell.

There’s someone out there who’s about to make a big ol’ mistake.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)