Beleskey among 10 worst active free-agent signings [ARTICLE]

[FlamesFanFromBC]

New York Rangers forward cleared waivers on Thursday, paving the road for the maligned winger’s return to the AHL.

That would make for Beleskey’s third stint in the minors, all during a five-year, $19 million deal signed with the Boston Bruins on July 1, 2015, that is one of the worst in recent Free Agent Frenzy history.

Beleskey, 30, has been scratched for an incredible 108 of the last 148 NHL games he was eligible to play in. Only 32 of those were due to injury, meaning the rest have been spent either healthy in the press box or the minors...

[FULL ARTICLE & VIDEO on TSN]

List includes:

KARL ALZNER, LD, Montréal [CP Thread July 2017]
DAVID BACKES, C, Boston
MATT BELESKEY, LW, N.Y. Rangers [CP Thread July 2015]
LOUI ERIKSSON, RW, Vancouver [CP Thread July 2016]
DMITRY KULIKOV, LD, Winnipeg
ANDREW LADD, LW, N.Y. Islanders
MILAN LUCIC, LW, Edmonton [CP Thread July 2016]
MATT MOULSON, LW, Buffalo [CP Thread July 2014]
ZACH PARISE, LW, Minnesota [CP Thread July 2012]
KEVIN SHATTENKIRK, RD, N.Y. Rangers

I always find it fun to look back at these contracts. At the time I remember thinking along with the majority of CP community that a lot of contracts were stinkers

[calumniate]

Matt Belecky!

- Don Cherry

[TheScorpion]

At least Parise is actually still good, but man that deal goes on forever

[Bingo]

Yeah the only one I liked at signing was Parise due to youth.

Head shaking list.

[theslymonkey]

Troy Brouwer contract would definitely be in there if not for the buyout.

[savardandjokinen]

Had we kept Brouwer he'd definitely be on this list

[GioforPM]

Beleskey lucked out because of the fairly thin field that year. Saad, Frolik, ROR, were really the only notable forwards. Sweeny had gotten ride of Hamilton and Lucic and needed to do something - too bad this was it.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

At least Parise is actually still good, but man that deal goes on forever

He's scheduled to become allergic to his equipment in three years.


Yeah, Parise deserves no part of this list. Currently 10 points in 8 games, but as long as he stays healthy 50-60 points is pretty expected for him. Not the greatest contract, far from it, but there's a lot worse.

I think you'd need to amend the wording and put it as worst contracts, not worst signings. Because the only reason Parise is on here is because of the rule changes after the signing. Small change, almost semantics, but huge difference.

[Bingo]

Brouwer lacked total dollars and term to be on a top ten list like that.

[Finger Cookin]

Gino's looking old in that clip.

[TheScorpion]

Surprised that Danny DeKeyser and Brent Seabrook didn't make the list. Or do UFA re-signings not count?

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Hah, I was so very wrong about Alzner. I figured he would at least be a solid 2nd pairing guy for years to come. I still stand by the fact that Montreal needed an experienced defenseman since they lost Sergachev, Emelin, and Beaulieu within a week of each other. They really had no choice.

The rest of these looked bad the day they signed them. Hard to figure otherwise. Even with hindsight helping us now, some of these should have been obvious at the time.

[Johnny Makarov]

Beleskey should give half his contract money to our arena. He'd be making $800k year if if wasn't for the Flames.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

What the heck happened to Shattenkirk, is what I want to know. I know he was hurt last year, but is that the reason for the precipitous fall off? Guy was top pairing quality in St. Louis.

[Gallick]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

What the heck happened to Shattenkirk, is what I want to know. I know he was hurt last year, but is that the reason for the precipitous fall off? Guy was top pairing quality in St. Louis.

Shattenkirk isn't as bad as some of the guys on this list, but the Rangers aren't very good, he's their highest paid player after Lundqvist, and he's been healthy scratched already this season with guys like Pionk and Skjei taking his minutes. His contract is very similar to Giordano's, so imagine if we had started 3-5-1 and Gio was healthy scratched - we might start justifiably squirming looking at the dollars and years remaining.

[FlamesFanFromBC]

What was the Flames worst contracts?

Brouwer is pretty obvious with the dollar amount for the production but are there any others that stand out over history?

Mason Raymond? Kari Ramo? Roman Turek? Jonas Hiller? Dennis Wideman? Matt Stajan? Rene Bourque?

[TheScorpion]

Ramo wasn't a bad signing at all. I think the worst one in recent memory is probably Brouwer, and then after that... Bouma?

[Gallick]

Originally Posted by FlamesFanFromBC

What was the Flames worst contracts?

Brouwer is pretty obvious with the dollar amount for the production but are there any others that stand out over history?

Mason Raymond? Kari Ramo? Roman Turek? Jonas Hiller? Dennis Wideman? Matt Stajan? Rene Bourque?

Some of those guys were definitely bad contracts, but prior to Brouwer, the Flames have done a pretty good job of staying away from those big-dollar, long-term deals in the salary cap era. None of the goalie contracts were that bad - we pretty much got what we paid for there, and they were short. Matt Stajan's first deal here didn't look great at the time of signing, but he ended up being an important part of the core for a while. Bourque scored 20 three times while getting paid $3.3m. Of all of the above, Wideman's was probably the worst given his penchant for being injured, declining play over the course of the deal, and of course the suspension and lawsuit headache.

We know the Flames offered the moon to an aging Brad Richards back in 2011 -- that would have been an unmitigated disaster had it ever come to pass.

File this one under "way too early to tell", and I'm rooting for him, but it's contracts like Neal's that tend to look bad like this a year or two in - big money, big term, wrong side of 30.

[OutOfTheCube]

I thought the Matt Moulson signing was good at the time -- he got traded twice the season before and managed to produce 23 goals, 28 assists, most of it away from Tavares (and a lot of it with us). Too bad he had one below average-ish season and then fell off a cliff. Contract is finally gone after this season, hooray!

[Jiri Hrdina]

Back in the day the Brad Werenka contract just seemed to hang around forever. Not his fault as he got injured, but it seemed like we had that dead money on the books for years and years.