Quote:
Originally Posted by dino7c
Not today anyway, nobody good this year
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I think in general it's just a bad avenue for doing anything outside of signing very cheap, value-focused deals on players who are choosing your team because they want to win. So I'm quite happy to see Connie sit this out entirely...although I do wish he'd do something impactful or direction setting, so hopefully that happens sometime this summer.
The moment you start looking at players who are hitting free agency looking to acquire a big bag, the value just crumbles. Even when they don't go terrible, they don't go great.
Blake Coleman - fine player, but $4.9M is "meh" value at best, and there's still 4 !@#$ing years on it.
Jacob Markstrom - average the 3 seasons out, and we'd have had equal or better goaltending having just signed random bargain goaltenders to short term deals (like Carolina does). If you can't draft and develop a star goalie yourself, you're best to just "moneyball" the position.
James Neal - absolutely destructive.
Michael Frolik - provided fine value until towards the end, and having that inflated salary on the books caused us structural salary cap damage, preventing us from signing Tkachuk to a 4, 5, or 6 year deal.
Troy Brouwer - destructive
Chris Tanev may be the only one we can outright say has been good value, but the injuries are catching up and he still has 1 year at $4.5M on it.
Free Agent contracts in these ranges are for impatient franchises who are knowingly buying bad years in hopes of finding short term success.