Quote:
Originally Posted by DementedReality
so you are ok with systemic design to cheat someone from getting paid fair market value? i guess these guys are modern day gladiators?
anyhow, other than Fedorov and Sakic, i dont recall too many 10million dollar UFA's. i do recall Gratton getting a front loaded deal for 10m, but i say PHI got its just rewards for being stupid.
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You have to remember that teams were paying close to equivalent salaries to RFA's on their UFA years. Also your comment about Gratton highlighted the other competition part that wasn't a part of league yet, the aggressive front loaded contracts for players intended to screw other owners out them.
(much like the penner and Vanek contracts)
Keith Tkaczuk,Pavel Bure, Alexei Yashin, Paul Kariya, Jaromir Jagr, Niklas Lidstrom and you can't forget
Foppa. Also remember that in changing the CBA, no longer are players sitting out a significant portion of the season. Even Iginla sat out parts of 2002/2003...
Here is a chart with spending for each team, with payroll totals the 5 years before the lockout.
Note how around the year 2000 salaries really took a leap up, and by the time year 2003/04 rolled around, most of the competitive or division leaders had salaries in excess of 50$M
In fact, let's cherry pick the 2002/03 season, and indicate who the Western Conference teams who qualified for the playoffs and their total team salaries.
- Dallas $61.7M
- Detroit $68M
- Colorado $60.1M
- Vancouver $31.8M
- St. Louis $63.1M
- Minnesota $20.5
- Anaheim $39.0
- Edmonton $30.9
Anaheim made it to the finals, to be knocked off by the Devils ($52.4M).
While this list and the results of that year would seem to indicate that teams with less than 40$ in committed salaries would have had a chance at the playoffs, it must be noted that Minnesota didn't qualify for playoffs the year after, and neither did Anaheim (whose salary jumped up to 54.4M the year after.)
Also consider that Vancouver was paying 2nd level contract or close to it for both Naslund and Bertuzzi. (
2.8 and 4.5 respectively)
Anyways, while the sources may be suspect, a little more work than the 5 minutes that I put in looking that stuff up, would probably confirm the numbers listed on the websites.