So....yeah. As is becoming our habit, I guess? We did a bunch of reasonable things and then one incomprehensible thing that throws it all into question. Here we go.
We signed Marty Biron as a backup. This is awesome. It's a 2-year deal worth $950,000 this season and $800,000 next, for a cap hit of $875,000/year for 2 years. We get an experienced goalie looking to prove himself, and he was attracted to us for cheap because we're local to his family, and because he wants to work with the incomparable Benoit Allaire (our goaltending coach). Sather kept talking about wanting to sign "a Cadillac at a Honda price" for a backup, and while that is completely ridiculous, this is a very smart signing.
After we tried to low-ball Christensen, offering him 2 years at slightly less than a Qualifying salary, he ended up hitting the free agent market. At which point we upped the offer to slightly more than a Qualifying salary, which he gladly accepted. This is all good. This is how negotiations work. He's good for us, and I wanted to bring him back, but he's not gonna go make $2 million somewhere else. So, we low-balled him, he said, no, then we upped it and he said yes. Good work all around. We have him locked up for another two years at $925,000/year.
We also bothered to re-sign Prospal. As an over-35 deal, it made sense to only sign him to a 1-year contract, which he agreed to. We had to overpay a little for him, but not a ton. Numbers are a little unclear, because it's a bonus-heavy contract, but it looks like we signed him for a $1 million salary with potential to earn another $1.1 million in bonuses. Since all potential bonuses count against the cap, my math says that's a $2.1 million cap hit - not terrible, but a little high. If he plays like he did in the first half of last season, he'll be well worth the money. If he plays like he did in the second half of last season, it's only a 1-year deal.
Worth noting: in this NY Post article, Larry Brooks does math that leads me to believe Prospal's bonuses don't count against the cap (he refers to Christensen and Prospal as a combined $1.95 million hit), but from the research I've done, I am pretty sure he's wrong about that. Just wanna throw that out there, in case I am the wrong one. But I'm really, really pretty sure that Prospal's hit is going to be $2.1 million for the season.
Finally, we increased what had been just a qualifying offer to Brandon Prust, who agreed yesterday to a 2-year deal at $800,000 a year. Totally worth it - he was a huge asset to the team in his short time with us, he's exactly the kind of fourth-liner I wanna see, and we game him a raise and an extra year to show him we want him around, without paying him too much at all. Good signing.
"Hey, hang on, dude," you might now say, my imaginary readers, who evidently borrow their epithets from 1992, "it sounds like Slats has been pretty reasonable so far this season! Between all these smart, relatively low-cost signings, and the reasonable offers and qualifiers given to our RFAs, what's your issue? ...Homes?"
Well, imaginary 90's guy, then we did this weird thing. As we discussed yesterday, we failed to sign Jody Shelley, who went to the Flyers for 3 years at $1.1/year, instead signing Derek Boogaard at 4 years for $1.625/year. We've already covered the demerits of Boogaard, who, along with his brother Aaron, runs a fighting camp for kids in Saskatchewan. When asked about it, Sather gave some pretty reasonable answers: "We were only interested in a two-year deal because of his age [Shelley is 34, Boogaard is 28]...he was looking for a three-year deal... That's really when we changed our minds." Also, "Obviously, he's the biggest and the best [Boogard is 6'8", 257 lbs], we needed that presence here. Last year, there were too many times when I saw guys scraping snow into Henrik's face and I didn't like it. I don't think you'll see that now."
That's actually exactly what I want to be hearing from a GM. That's totally reasonable. Add in the fact that Boogaard is coming from the Wild, where he made his career out of protecting Marian Gaborik, and it starts to sound like a smart choice, giving up Shelley for Boogaard. There's an argument, sure, that we had a good enforcer that was effective and good at some other non-punchy things, and we once again got rid of him for a foreign punching machine (though Boogaard, at least, didn't end last season by incapacitating a beloved Ranger). However, that's not my real problem with the signing. My real problem is the contract's value.
Look, it's no secret that We hAve DeEp salary cap issues, and a little bit of money thrown in here and there ends up hurting. Torts won't play the 4th line more than a few minutes a game, and we know Boogaard won't be scoring too many points, and it's hard to justify $1.625 million. Put another way, let's summarize the signings we've made this off-season so far, in terms of the salary they'll be making this season.
Brandon Prust - $800,000
Erik Christensen - $925,000
Marty Biron - $950,000
Vinny Prospal - $1 million
Derek Boogaard - $1.7 million
Is Boogaard really worth that much more than Prospal, Biron, Christensen, or Prust? 'Cause that's the message our signings so far are sending. That's the issue I have: in a salary-capped league, it's awful hard to justify the above numbers.
Ah, well. Let's see what happens next.
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