Free Agents

It's Monday. Three more days until Free Agent Frenzy 2K10!!1 By then, a smart team would have locked up the restricted free agents it wants to retain, and also made offers to a few impending UFAs as well (remember that their contracts expire at the end of the month, so we're the only team that is allowed to negotiate with them for the next 3 days). Here's where things stand.

On the UFA list, we see some backup goalies we don't really care about (Valiquette, Zaba, Auld). Then we see forwards Locke and Parenteau and defensemen Potter and Eriksson. Of those, we probably want to try to retain at least Parenteau and Eriksson, if not all four, but none of those four should be giving us much pause right now - they're not going to be in high demand July 1. That leaves Olli Jokinen, Vinny Prospal, and Jody Shelley.

Jokinen and his $5.5 million previous-season salary can likely take a hike. He's unlikely to cut us a deal, as he can probably pull in that kind of cash elsewhere, and he just wasn't a big enough difference on our team to be worth that kind of money, in a season where we're still stuck with useless big-money contracts and have to sign a couple of important kids. He was a tryout rental, and we all saw this coming. Note: this doesn't mean he was a bad acquisition. He was a very smart, cap room-clearing acquisition. And now it's time for him to sign somewhere else.

Which brings us to the people we should be negotiating with. Vinny Prospal and Jody Shelley. Last year, they made a combined $1.875 million. Their impact was clearly well beyond that. They're both guys that have meshed very well with this particular team very quickly, and that can't be overstated. There's no reason to let either of these guys test the free agency waters, where they will likely get offered more than they're worth by someone out there. Better that we at least try to lock them up at reasonable offers (slight raises for each) before that happens. Shelley is rumored to be asking around $1.5 million (about what we're paying Brashear to rot), which is totally reasonable.

Please note, as Larry Brooks does, that these offers are not Sather's MO. Sather will almost certainly sit back and let the deadline come without offering deals to either of these men. As we've seen in his time here lately, he is the kind of GM that sits back and lets deals happen to him. So, it is probable that on Thursday, both Prospal and Shelley will hit the open market without even an offer from the Rangers for them to consider. But, we can dream.

And then there are the RFAs. Strangely, it's the unimportant ones that have the more impending deadline. It is assumed that we have at least offered qualifiers to Staal and Girardi, while we try to negotiate with them for bigger deals. So, they stay RFAs after July 1, while we sort out their contracts. That leaves question marks under Erik Christensen, Brandon Prust, and Ilkka Heikkinen (as well as a bunch of other Wolfpack kids we won't analyze too much here). It is unknown whether or not we are even extending them qualifiers. It would be silly not to, but I'm not making any assumptions; I want some kind of confirmation.

And how are the RFA negotiations going? Not great. We don't know details, all we know for sure is that Sather has described the difference between himself and Staal's agent (who happens to be Bobby Orr) as a "chasm." The rumors currently floating are that Girardi is asking for 4 years at at least $3 million a year. I agree with Sather that that sounds high. I was thinking more along the lines of $2 million a year for 2 years, like we offered Dubinsky and Callahan. I have trouble believing that Girardi is worth a million more per year, for twice as many years, as Callahan.

And Staal? Word is that we offered him what Girardi is seeking - $3.5 million a year for 4 years. That sounds completely reasonable to me. Which begs the question: how much is Staal asking for, that there's a "chasm" between those numbers? Surely he wouldn't be asking for as much as $5 million a year?

No one really knows, but if the Rangers' $3.5 million offer rumor is true, then we can go right back to blaming Wade Redden. Staal can't possibly think, coming off of his $765,000 season, looking at Callahan's $2.4 million and Dubinsky's $2 million, that he's worth a "chasm" more than $3.5 million. However, when you look at Redden making $6.5 million, you can start to see where he's coming from.

Which puts the Rangers in a bind. Certainly, we don't want a culture of overpaying players to breed more overpaying players. The right thing to do is offer Staal what he's worth, which is what we've done. But, at the same time, we don't want to risk losing one of our only competent defensemen. And so, here we are.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that if I'm Sather, I'm sticking with my offer to Staal (and my theoretical lower offer to Girardi) for now. I agree with him there. I'm also sending qualifying offers to Christensen, Prust, and Heikkinen, which he may well be doing as well. What I'm also doing, if I'm Sather, which he seems to not be doing at all, is offering something between $1 million and $1.5 million to each of Shelley and Prospal. That's where I disagree with the man.

So far.