Flames Summer Summary

Assuming the highly dubious rumors regarding a Devils/Flames swap never come to fruition, it looks like Calgary is finished for the summer. And even though the last few weeks have been rather barren, news wise, the summer was a rather busy one for the Flames organization nonetheless. I figured an off-season re-cap was in order, therefore. Enjoy!

May 11 -

Calgary re-signs Stephane Yelle to a 2 year, $2.8 million contract.
Everyone knows Yelle is a Sutter favorite, due in no small part to his tireless work ethic and excellent defensive prowess. A fact clearly demostrated by the rapidity with which Sutter locked him up.

June 6 -

The only guy to get a hat trick in a Flames uniform last year scores a 2 year, $2.4 million deal. The challenge facing Charles Kobasew this coming season is to build on his 20 goals from last year while improving his defensive zone play. That, and not getting clobbered by opposing defensemen every shift.

June 24 -

The Big trade. Sutter sends Jordan Leopold and a 2nd rounder to Colorado for Alex Tanguay. Flames finally acquire another legitimate scoring threat to compliment Iggy. Subsequent analysis of the trade shows that Tanguay excels at ES scoring which was the Flames biggest weakness in 05/06. Wicked.



June 29 -

Rumors begin to surface that the Flames may sign Jeremy Roenick. It came out later that JR had narrowed the choices to Calgary or Phoenix before finally settling on the Coyotes for Family reasons (lived there previously). Whew. Course, should Roenick experience some kind of renaissance in the desert, we may be left lamenting that fact later. But I doubt it.


July 2 -

Sutter plugs the Leopold hole on the blueline by signing former first rounder Andrei Zyuzin to a 2 year, $2.8 million deal. Zyuzin played under Sutter during his days in San Jose and was hopeful Calgary would be one of the teams interested in his services. He reportedly told his agent to "get a deal done" should the Flames give him a call. Mission accomplished.

July 3 -

Chris Pronger gets traded to Anaheim. Not necessarily Flames news, but...I like to rub salt in wounds.

July 5 -

Busy day. Sutter locks up Tanguay for 3 years @ $5.25 million/year and decides to get charitable by giving Friesen a 1 year, $1.6 million chance at redemption. There are some Flames fans arguing that both of these player will end up playing on the #1 scoring unit with Jarome, but Im guessing it will most likely be one over the other. Can you guess which one?

July 6 -

Popular back-up goaltender Jamie McLennan returns to Calgary for just over $500,000. Everyone was sad to see him go at the deadline back in '04, as much for his comical antics as for his play on the ice. He should be an ideal back-up for Kipper this year (jovial, friendly and able to play 10-15 games well and without complaint).

July 8 -

Sutter steps down from his head coaching duties in order to concentrate on his role as GM. Predictably, the reigns are handed over to assistant coach Jim Playfair. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on the team, though most Flames fans consider it a positive move.

July 12 -

The NHL releases the 06/07 schedule. Notable Flames matches include 3 games against the greasers (season opener, New Years Eve, season ending) as well dome visits from Alexander Ovechkin and the Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes.

July 27 -

Sutter Signs blueline bruiser Brad Ference. I didn't like this signing much at the time and, in retrospect...I still don't. While Ference will probably be an injury fill-in during the season I still don't really see him exceling - even in that relatively limited role. Oh well. Maybe he'll prove me wrong.

August 4 -

Eric Godard becomes the Flame's next hired goon. Waste of money if you ask me. At least it's a two-way contract.

August 17 -

In what looks to be the final move of the Summer, Sutter and Lombardi finally come to terms. Lombo is re-upped for $1.6 million over the next two seasons. Cheap contract, good offensive potential, no complaints.

Quick-Reference Stuff -

Off-season Additions/Subtractions:

In

Alex Tanguay
Jeff Friesen
Andrei Zyuzin
Jamie McLennan
Brad Ference
Eric Godard

Out

Bryan Marchment (UFA)
Shean Donovan (Signed with Boston)
Cale Hulse (UFA)
Brian Boucher (UFA)
Chris Simon (Signed with NYI)
Craig MacDonald (Signed with Chicago)
Jordan Leopold (Traded for Alex Tanguay)

Current Cap Number - 41.603
Cap Space - 2.397
Number of Players signed - 23
Average Age of Players - 28.4
(numbers gleaned from cataloupehalves Salary Site. See link on the sideboard).

Depth Chart*:

Huselius - Tanguay - Iginla
Friesen - Langkow - Kobasew
Lombardi** - Lundmark - Amonte
Nilson - Yelle - McCarty

(Ritchie, Godard)

Phaneuf - Regehr
Zyuzin - Hamrlik
Warrener - A. Ference

(B. Ference)

Kiprusoff
McLennan

(Krahn)

*(Not meant to reflect potential line combinations)
**(Lombardi listed on left-wing thanks to Calgary's plethora of centers)

Overall, Im fairly pleased at where the team sits currently. Calgary has 2 decent offensive lines, a formidible blueline corps. and a Vezina winner in net. not to mention a bit of cap space to work with should the line-up need tweaking during the season. I could have lived without some of Sutter's signings this off-season (Godard, Ference), but I think the good far out-weighs the bad...

*EDIT - Lombardi numbers listed above are false. He was only re-signed for a single season ($800,000). My bad.

Phoenix - The NHL's Island of Misfit Toys

With the news that Owen Nolan is apparently going to sign with Phoenix I went about wondering (not for the first time) what exactly the game plan is down in the ol' desert.

At a casual glance one is struck with the preponderance of, for lack of a more polite term, NHL cast-offs and "B rate" pseudo-stars peppering the line-up. For example:

- $3 million man Mike Comrie was run out of Edmonton on a rail. He was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 03/04 where he played a mere 21 games before being dumped to the Coyotes for some spare parts (Burke, Radivojevic, prospect). Apparently his experiences in Edmonton were so..."significant", TSN sees fit to list them as a "flaw" in his scouting report:

Doesn't have ideal NHL size. Must put his Edmonton ordeal behind him. Needs to work on his play without the puck.

That can't be good.

- Oleg Saprykin. A first round draft pick of the Calgary Flames, Saprykin never managed to live up to his billing. He tended to be very inconsistent and more than a little unintelligent when he was on the ice: his primary offensive strategy seemed to be "skate fast and shoot from anywhere". He would disappear, offensively, for long stretches and was always useless in his own end. After the cup run, he was packaged with Denis Gauthier and sent to Phoenix for Damond Langkow. While a sentimental favorite thanks to being part of the cup-finalist squad, most Flames fans, upon reflection, were glad to see the back of him.

- Jeremy Roenick. JR had a horrible season last year for the $4 million + LA paid him. Thanks to his advancing age and history of concussions, The Mouth was forced to engage in an earnest PR campaign during the summer in order to raise interest in his services around the league. It was rumored he was coming to Calgary for a short while and I was pretty happy when Roenick settled on Phoenix. Seems like a natural fit to me.

- Steven Reinprecht. Another guy who can't seem to stick despite offensive flair, Rhino was first a King, then a Sabre (for about 2 hours) next an Av and then a Flame and is now a Coyote. Speaking from a Flames persepective, Reinprecht has offensive talent. He also has a penchant for inconsistency and isn't the strongest guy around. Not to mention his injury-prone-ness. That said, Rhino ended the year strong after the trade last season and he managed to produce career numbers. Im still a little miffed about the meagre return Sutter got in this trade (Reinprecht, Sauve for Boucher and Leclerc).

- Georges Laraque. Laraque was cut loose this summer by the Oilers despite being immensely popular with players and fans alike. Edmonton management no doubt recognized that the league is on the fast track to rendering guys like Big Georges obsolete. So what do the Coyotes do? Sign the UFA with virtually zero leverage to a 2 year, $2.2 million contract with the an added no trade clause! That's what!

- Mike Ricci. Aging and beat up, Ricci's game has been on the decline for a few years now. He scored 7 goals and 26 points with the Sharks in 03/04 after which he was released as an UFA by San Jose. 'Course, in swooped the Desert Dogs...

- Derek Morris. Don't get me started on Derek Morris. I hated him when he was in Calgary. I went to games back in the dark ages of the "Young Guns" primarily to taunt him...anyways, Morris is another "highly touted" former Flame's draft-pick that has somehow ended up in Phoenix. Calgary got rid of him as soon as Jordan Leopold showed signs of being an NHL defensemen and then he eventually wore out his welome with his 2nd team, Colorado, as well. He's got some skill, but he's pretty much just a passionless tool. Im convinced he'll end his career somewhere in Germany.

- Curtis Joseph. Maligned for being a play-off loser, Joseph was signed by the Coyotes for a virtual song and dance...mainly because no one else was willing to take a chance on him. He's a 39 year-old former all-star who's never won the Stanely cup...and it looks like he never will. His best days are probably well behind him (and he's their #1 goalie next year).

- Philippe Sauve. Was told to basically take a long walk off a short pier by Sutter last season.

- Nick Boynton. Was drafted by Washington in the first round back in '97. Then he was drafted in the first round again by Boston a year later after the Capitals let him re-enter the draft for some reason. After a couple of salary disputes and some injuries, the Bruins sent Boynton to Phoenix for Paul Mara. I still don't understand this trade from a Coyotes perspective. I guess Mara just wasn't "unwanted" enough?

(For those of you that are especially bored, check out the guy listed directly below Boynton on tsn's player list. Excellent porno alias, no?)

And add to all that Owen Nolan. A 34 year old guy who's played all of 79 NHL games in the last 4 years. He was apparently battling knee-injuries and Toronto Maple Leaf lawyers all of the prior season. Hell, after he failed to sign with a team around the trade deadline in March, I figured he was in line for retirement. Guess not.

I suppose they can just keeping adding them to the pile. Should he flop in the swamp, expect to see Bertuzzi wearing Coyotes silks sometime in the near future. Mike Danton's out of prison? How fast can he get down south? I wonder how long Rico Fata's going to swim against the current? Considering their tendency for accumulating ex-Flames-prospect-turned-crappy-player, it's only a matter of time before we see Rico skating swiftly and stupidly into the boards at either end of the Coyotes rink...

EDIT - How could I forget the Brett Hull fiasco?

Top Seven of the Summer

With summer winding down and fresh NHL news dwindling, I decided to fatten the blog with a "Top Stories o' the offseason ('06 edition)" type-post. The last few weeks nothwithstanding, this has been one of the most interesting and frenetic summers in the league's history. So without further preamble, I present "Top Stories o' the offseason":

1.) The Chris Pronger "Situation"

It's rare that a player will demand a trade only a season after signing a 5 year contract. It's even rarer that the player will do so on the heels of an extended run into the play-offs that saw him become the toast of the town. Of course, what made this story so titillating and therefore such great fodder for the mainstream media and bloggers alike was the total lack of clarity surrounding the thing. Not only did Pronger leave for vacation while charging his agent with the task of delivering the stomach-punch worthy news to the Oilers management, he also later refused to properly identify any of his reasons for demanding the trade in the first place. In the face of this lack of details and apparently inexplicable turn of events, the scandalous minds of the puzzled public went about filling the vaccum. What followed was all assortment of rumors and soap-operatic innuendo: Pronger's wife was unhappy in Edmonton because she's an American blue-blood; because she's isolated from her family; because Pronger had an affair with a local puck-bunny... no, wait, a local news anchor. The whispers piled up and were disseminated by way of messageboard, blog, phone, water-cooler gossip and newspaper. Eventually, though, the lack of any solid evidence (as well as threat of litigation, no doubt) disspersed the playground chatter and Pronger was dealt to the Ducks for Lupul, Smid and bunch of future assets. Now, in the wake of Pronger's "Benedict Arnold" Edmonton fans are left with little more than a gaping hole on their blueline and a debate over what unfavorable moniker will replace "The Orbs of Power".

(Yes, that's Chris Pronger in the image above. No, I don't know what he's doing. Pic found here.)

2.) Wang's World

Not wanting to be out-done by Chris and his wife, the Islander's owner Charles Wang fired his newly minted GM Neil Smith (a month into his new 3 year contract) and hired medicore back-up goaltender Garth Snow as his replacement. I still haven't decided if this is more stupid than weird, but it's certainly a bit of both. To Snow's credit, he wrote an open letter to the unfortunate Islander fans that ackowledged the oddity of the situation. It remains to be seen, however, if he can handle the duties of being a NHL GM just as graciously. One of the ironies of this debacle is that Snow was slated to earn a salary of $750,000 as the Islander's back-up this year...which has now become a cap figure he'll have to work around during the year. My final hope, when it comes to this story, is that the NYI suffer a rash of injuries in the crease in the middle of the season, thereby forcing Snow to once again don his giant pads and become the first GM/player in NHL history (or at least, in recent memory)...

Party on Wang! Party on Garth!

3.) Defensemen and the Free Agent Frenzy

It was truly the Year of the Blueliner when it came to cashing in on Unrestricted Free Agency. Zdeno Chara was the biggest winner (literally and figuratively) - he scored a 5 year, 7.5m/year contract with the Boston Bruins. Jovocop was coaxed to the join Gretzky's Desert Dogs for a mere $32.5 million over 5 years. JFJ followed the trend and scooped up Pavel Kubina for $5m/season and Hal Gill for $2.1m per year. Jay Mckee joined the hapless blues for $4 million a year and Willie Mitchell was enticed to the West Coast for $14million over 4 years. Filip Kuba, Kim Johnsson, Jaroslav Spacek, Ruslan Salei - all scored more than $3million/season for several seasons before the dust settled.

In contrast to the manic spending that greeted the summer's onset, NHL GM's have suddenly become tight-fisted in the off-season's twilight. Recently, Duck's GM Brian Burke
chaffed against the relatively sane figure granted to Vitaly Vishnevski in arbitration, while the previously free spending Bruins have walked away from David Tanabe and his $1.25m arbitration award. Considering the league-wide market was valuing players line Salei and McKee at $3/4 million per season only a few short weeks ago, it's hard to fathom why guys like Tanabe and Vishnevski are left trying to justify contracts below $1.6 million a year. I guess the lesson here is: be part of the feeding frenzy early or you'll be left fighting for scraps.

4.) Trading Bert for Roberto

The Bertuzzi/Vancouver saga mercifully came to a close when sophomore GM Dave Nonis managed to deal Bert+parts for Lungo+parts shortly before the draft. The Deal gives the Canucks their first marquee goalie since...uh...ever...while Keenan managed to claim his coveted surly, gruff-speaking, back-of-head-punching power forward. The move will no doubt benefit both clubs and players - Bertuzzi can leave the Moore incident behind in the oppressive media fish bowl that is Vancouver, while Luongo will finally have the chance to lead a hockey-hungry franchise into the play-offs.

5.) Those Stubborn Russians

It's August 9th and there still remains a divide between the Russian Hockey Federation and the NHL regarding the player transfer deal. According to this article the IIHF-NHL agreement

...sets the financial sums the NHL sends to European federations in player transfers. The IIHF redistributes the money among those national federations and clubs that lose players to the NHL, using a formula decided by the IIHF and national federations.

Im not sure what's the onion in the ointment here - the level of compensation or the nature of the IIHF's "redistribution formula". Given that they seem to quibbling over a $200,000 transfer fee for Malkin, Im guessing it's the former rather than the latter. So much for crushing capitalistic greed, eh Comrade?

The upshot for NHL clubs is an inability to bring over any of their Russian prospects. The most notable, of course, being the Pittsburgh Penguin's Evgeni Malkin, who looks like he'll be spending another winter across the pond (despite the Penguins desperate need for any help they can get). Beyond that, it's probable that almost every club has a Ruskie or two they'd like to re-locate to North America. While it looks like some players, like Edmonton's Alexei Mikhnov, may look for ways around the stalled IIHF deal, Im guessing most teams will have to go without many of their young Russian assets this season.

6.) Leopold in, Tanguay Out

Maybe this isn't really a "Top Story" per se, but it sure was big news for Flames fans. My thoughts on the Tanguay acquisition have been enumerated here and here. In addition, MudCrutch devoted a recent post to Tanguay at his site. One of the more amusing bits of news regarding this trade (from a Calgary perspective) is that Leopold will apparently miss the start of the season due to a hernia operation.

7.) NJ Devils Go Cap Crazy

Looking at the Devil's salary commitments for 06/07 is like witnessing a horrible car accident - oddly, perversely fascinating. Lou Lam has less than 60 days before the start of the season; 60 days to re-sign both Brian Gionta and Paul Martin and he has precisely -($2.495m) worth of cap space to do it. It's going to take a bit of GM wizadry to accomplish that feat, no doubt. So either a big ticket guy like Gomez or Rafalski is shipped out for some cheap prospects or Mogilny and Malakhov suffer sudden and inexplicable season ending injuries during training camp. Welcome to the NHL salary-cap era New Jersey!

Anyways, those are the top 7 (as I see it at least). This summer yielded a plethora of other interesting stories, of course: the Ottawa, San Jose, Chicago three way trade involving Havlat and others. The Rask for Raycroft swap. The baffling continuation of Belfour's career. Hasek's 3rd go-round in Detroit. But I think I got the top 7 covered.

As for the rest of the summer...now that Legace has settled on St. Louis, I guess the only story left is the unrestricted free agency of Anson Carter...*sigh*...the season can't start soon enough.