Quote:
Originally Posted by transplant99
Was it though?
I think there is a clear strategy from him.
Whether or not it gets executed is yet to be seen, but it;s there.
30M in cap space may be the single biggest weapon anyone in the league has to offer. More than any player or combination of players could return.
How is this for an example...
Knowing the Canucks are both a natural rival both geographically and division wise, and that they are in a serious cap crunch having to sign both Hughes and Petterson to large deals
What happens if he offer sheets Petterson to something like 7 years and 9M per year?
That puts serious pressure on Benning to match and then figure out how to ice a team moving forward.
If he doesnt match, then they get their franchise like C at age 22 for the better [art of the next decade, they seriously weaken their biggest rival and STILL have 20+ Million dollars to play with and recoup some of the lost draft picks.
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I agree completely. Talk of Francis being an idiot is laughable. Did he take a couple picks that you or I might disagree with? Of course, everyone has different opinions on the potential of some players.
But what he did - what he built his strategy around - was to focus on cap space. And I agree that it is the most valuable commodity he could have come away with yesterday. Sure, there were names like Voracek and many others, good players. But their cap hits make them not that valuable.
Sitting on $30M in cap space (instead of maybe $10M if he had listened to all you geniuses), he can now go out and acquire some much better players than what was available in the draft.
And your example of offer sheeting someone like Petterson is a great example of just how much power he has. How he chooses to wield it is yet to be seen. But make no mistake, he has plenty of capital (hey, Pepsi!) to play with.
Specifically to the Petterson example, I would totally do that if I were him. Is Petterson a perfect player? No. But he is probably about as good of a player as Francis could get his hands on right now. Yes, VAN would match (and frankly, I doubt Petterson would sign), but damn that would be awesome and hilarious to see.