The Two-Line Pass

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So it wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote a thing saying the Ducks gave Ryan Getzlaf a silly amount of money for a bad number of years.

Then they gave Corey Perry the same number of years and even more money. I don’t understand it at all, but this time for a very different reason. If you’re going to give Getzlaf $66 million over eight years, then yeah you probably have to give Perry $3 million on top of that just out of consideration for the time he won a Hart Trophy and dragged a crap Ducks team screaming into the playoffs. That just about covers the added revenues from those few extra home dates, doesn’t it?

And the thing is, too, that it always stood to reason that if the Ducks kept Getzlaf, they would likewise keep Perry, considering how long they’ve been running buddies and how valuable they both are to the franchise. But the decision to keep them together also necessitates some sort of trade, doesn’t it?

The cap is coming down hard next season, and given who they currently have on the roster, the Ducks will be spending a whopping $21.975 million tied up in Getzlaf, Perry, and Bobby Ryan. About one-third of the $64.3 million salary cap next year. That’s not counting Cam Fowler’s $4 million, or Jonas Hiller’s $4.5 million (neither of which look like particularly prudent deals), which bumps the total amount being spent on just five players, three of whom are forwards, to $30.475 million, more than 47 percent of the cap.

This says three things:

1) Saku Koivu and Teemu Selanne, both of whom are free agents in July, will not be returning for victory lap seasons unless they come in at significant discounts, which they probably won’t. If you didn’t get out to a Western Conference game to see them live one last time, you blew your chance.

2) Bobby Ryan’s getting traded. He’s affordable, he’s younger than the other two, and unlike Perry and Getzlaf, his deal doesn’t have any restrictions on trades. Add in the fact that he’s been a repeated trade target (or at least is purported to have been) over the last however-many seasons, and it’s looking like he better start going through his house with a label maker.

3) The Ducks are going to be terrible.

Even getting out from under Ryan’s contract and replacing it with a slightly comparable player — the number of players who averaged 30 goals a year in the last four seasons, 11 fewer than Ryan’s total over that span, checks in at 18 — is unlikely; by my count, not one of them has lower cap hit than does Ryan. Having so little flexibility under the cap to sign, take on, or call up about seven guys (Anaheim has 16 signed for next season right this second for $53.484 million) doesn’t speak too well of how all this is going to work out.

Especially when you consider how hard Viktor Fasth is going to regress to the mean either later this season or into the next one. And how they’re going to have to unload Ryan. Or, if they somehow avoid doing that, dealing with the generally low quality of player they’ll be able to squeeze onto the roster will help to ensure a season as bad as this one was expected to be.

The best part about all this, by the way, is that an actual thing Corey Perry said after signing his team-dooming extension was that he was encouraged to stay by the Ducks’ strong performance this year. Yeah, Corey, about that…

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Jo Innes. If you want me to write about any old thing in hockey, all you have to do is donate $50 below. It’s easy and fun. Bye.)

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

If there’s one thing the Senators need in their attempts to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second year in a row, it’s… well obviously it’s for Erik Karlsson’s achilles to reassemble itself 100 percent and be ready to play tomorrow.

But if there’s two things the Senators need it’s… okay well I mean there’s Jason Spezza getting healthy too, but that’s going to come relatively soon, I’m pretty sure. But if there’s three things the Senators need, well, I could do this all day. The fact of the matter is that one thing the Senators definitely did not need is to acquire Matt Kassian from the Minnesota Wild for a 2014 sixth-round pick yesterday.

Here’s a real quote from general manager Bryan Murray on why the Senators went out and acquired a player who has nine games under his belt this season, all of them at the AHL level:

“He’s a big strong guy, he’s a very physical player, he’s a very willing combatant. With the number of young players and injuries we have on our roster, there has got to be a sense of comfort that they can go out and play without being pushed around, which has happened a couple times here so we just felt it was a need and an addition that, given the opportunity to get one, a guy like this, a big guy, he’s a young player and we’re hoping that he’ll work with our coaches and be a real contributor to our team.”

That’s an awful lot of words to say, “The other teams in the Northeast have some fighters and we don’t,” but that’s the general thrust of it. At 6-foot-4 and 232 pounds, Kassian is a big boy. He also sucks at hockey. And so the Senators’ decision to use him in the lineup (albeit “at the coach’s discretion,” according to Murray) seems like it would be not at all conducive to winning.

It’s true that the Senators didn’t have a true fighter in the lineup. Hit-and-run pukes like Chris Neil don’t count, because he at least has some amount of value to the team outside punching guys in the face. This reeks of remorse for letting Zenon Konopka walk, coincidentally to the Wild, and even then, at least Konopka wins draws pretty effectively. The list of hockey things outside of fighting that Kassian does pretty effectively begins and probably ends with skating without falling down most of the time.

It seemed to me that the Senators were a just-okay hockey team last year, but one that wisely stepped out of the Northeast Arms Race that saw Montreal and Buffalo bulk up in order to better physically compete with the Bruins and Leafs. Somehow, their currently being fifth in the East despite being not-that-great and then suffering all those catastrophic injuries on top of it isn’t enough for Murray, and he has to try to make Paul MacLean waste a roster spot to put this bum into the lineup five minutes a night.

I’ll remind you again that Kassian only has nine games this season in the AHL. Obviously losing a sixth-round pick next year is almost the NHL equivalent of giving up nothing, but even that’s too much. The only thing I can think is maybe Murray thought he was getting a steal by acquiring Zack Kassian from the wrong team.

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Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

I read the Ryan Getzlaf contract extension news yesterday and, unlike many times when I’ve joked about such a problem, I actually thought the details contained in that first tweet about it were the result of a typographical error.

Granted, Getzlaf is having a phenomenal year as a 27-year-old with nine goals and 18 assists in just 22 games, and has been an elite forward in the league since his third season (save for a bit of a hiccup last year thanks to his shooting at literally half his career percentage). But at the same time, an average of $8.25 million a season for the next EIGHT years? That is a pretty sizable raise from his current cap hit of $5.325 million and, I don’t think, all that reasonable. Again, the guy is 27 years old. Now he’s signed until he’s 35. The odds that he can put up the kind of numbers he’s putting up this year in even half those next eight seasons seems rather low.

But moreover, I wonder what this means for everyone else on the Ducks. I’m pretty sure it means Teemu Selanne isn’t coming back. I’m also fairly sure it means either Corey Perry isn’t getting re-signed or Bobby Ryan is getting traded in the offseason or both.

Why it’s such a weird move is that the Ducks are obviously not going to start paying everyone. They’re not a cap ceiling team, falling about $15 million short of the limit this year, so to give one player that much money — about one-eighth of next year’s cap, which you’ll remember is going to fall, and about 20 percent(!) of what they have committed to the 15 players currently under contract — seems a little crazy. Especially because that player is Ryan Getzlaf. That’s Eric Staal money, and while I’d put him on roughly the same level as Eric Staal in terms of quality across the league, Eric Staal is also dramatically, almost hysterically overpaid; he shouldn’t be the fourth-highest cap hit in the league, because that’s insane.

Evgeni Malkin’s contract is up after next season. Think he looks at the Getzlaf contract and does the finger thing for money at Ray Shero? Because I sure do. He has four (soon to be five) seasons better on a points-per-game basis than anything Getzlaf produced before this year. The Penguins better be ready to fill Mario Lemieux’s pool with money for Geno to swim in.

While the ink was still wet on that contract, someone said this is another case of the NHL’s middle class disappearing, and maybe all that is true. But it seems more likely that this is just a case of a team signing a dumbass contract that doesn’t make any sense. It seems more like what happens when a team that has the ability to overpay their stars does so. This is a deal that affects no one but the best players on their own teams. It matters for Malkin. It matters for Tom Vanek, whose deal is up after next season as well. But those guys were going to get roughly this kind of money regardless of whether Getzlaf signed for $8.25 million or $1.25 million.

It doesn’t matter to the NHL’s rank and file because the Ducks were never going to spend beyond Getzlaf and their other stars anyway. That’s why no one ever complains or even talks about how bad Staal’s deal is: because no one besides the Hurricanes has to care about it. It plays no role in the market because everyone knows it’s ridiculous, and it gets filed away in their minds as such. It’ll be the same with this Getzlaf deal.

With that having been said, $8.25 million a year to Ryan Getzlaf is a pretty bad contract.

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(Ed. note: I haven’t written a post like this in three years but now seems as good a time as any to do it again because of you-know-what.)

The entire purpose of my entire foray into the hockey blogging world was basically to highlight all the terrible and stupid things that happen in this great sport on a yearly basis. Much of that is driven by the sport’s greatest professional organization (for better or worse (worse)), the National Hockey League, so there was usually no shortage of fodder.

And for a little while (read: two years) after I started, I would compile a list of the dumbest things that happened in the previous calendar year and make fun of them all over again. Then I stopped for no good reason other than I got lazy. Frankly, I didn’t even remember I used to do it until like two days ago. So I decided to do it again. Here are Nos. 10-6 of the worst things to happen in hockey this year, as far as I’m concerned:

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There is, I suppose, something to be said for loyalty.

And also, I further suppose, something to be said for being willing to take a $21.2 million, four-year payday at the age of 36 when your production is at what is basically a career low. So yeah, Shane Doan is back in the desert, with a contract that will pay him $5.3 million against the cap until he’s 40.

Good deal for him, a very, very bad deal for the Coyotes, and one that doesn’t exactly flatter the league’s “We’re paying the players too much money,” stance.

Doan is, it should be said, is still a very effective hockey player and a much-respected leader, but any time you’re agreeing to pay someone that kind of money into their 40s, you are taking on egregious risk, especially because this is a 35-plus contract (though one supposes it’s fair to note that the Coyotes are never going to be in danger of bumping up against whatever salary cap ceiling is put in place in the next few months). Nonetheless, this deal makes sense when viewed through the lens of, “Shane played with this franchise for a long time so…,” and nothing else.

He had 22 goals and 50 points last season. He was eclipsed in both by Teddy Purcell, Jiri Hudler and Pascal Dupuis, none of whom are making Doan Money for the very simple reason that they are not worth Doan Money. Neither is Doan.

In the past four seasons, we’ve seen his point totals go from 73 (when he was 32) to 55 to 60 to 50. Is it that unfeasible that commensurate declines occur over the NEXT four seasons? It’s difficult to imagine a world in which Doan can’t put up more than 40 points in a season, but then it’s equally difficult to imagine one in which he’s playing his current style at 38 or 39 years old.

And all of this goes without mentioning that, yes, Doan is a bit of a soldier. He agreed to a deal in principle with Greg Jamison’s ownership group, then signed it, despite the fact that Jamison doesn’t yet own the team. It seems like he will in the relatively near future, but nonetheless, he doesn’t now, and the various entities in Glendale (City Council, ballot initiatives, sales taxes, conservative thinktanks, etc.) seem to take some amount of perverse pleasure in actively trying to ruin things at every turn.

It’s clear Doan isn’t committed to the city, but to the franchise that drafted him, which he’d better be because just like there’s no guarantee he’ll be playing hockey this season, there’s also no guarantee that he’ll be doing so in Glendale next season. This is all very strange, quite frankly.

Too much money for too many years to a 36-year-old from a team with no owner and a terribly uncertain future? Maybe Bettman’s right after all.

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Well another Festivus is upon us and since I can’t write a post about a metal pole or a meatloaf dinner (although…), I figure I’ll do what just about every other blog on the planet must be doing today and write a post about the stupidest things that happened in hockey this year, and then call it The Airing of Grievances in a hat tip to both Seinfeld and Glen Rock, New Jersey’s greatest export, scumbag rockers Titus Andronicus, who have an album by the same name that you should definitely buy and are incredible.

In poking around this stupid site just now in preparation for writing this malarkey, I also noticed that I did the exact same thing on this date last year, but due to my being a moron, failed to connect the dots and actually make it more Festivian, which I think is a word I invented just now but oh well.

Anyhow, here is a list of the hockey-related things by which I felt particularly aggrieved this year.

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With the year finally winding down, we can now look back on the prior 350-something days and start to put together some conclusive feelings about them. It seems, to me at least, that this has been literally the stupidest calendar year of hockey in maybe a decade.

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A few weeks ago now, I explored the fantastic travel package that the Pittsburgh Penguins were offering their fans. It was something like $3,000 PLUS airfare.

At least the Rangers are including the flights as they screw you.

For $3,625, you get the following:

Roundtrip air from New York, NY (JFK) to Prague, Czech Republic. Departs JFK on Thursday, October 2nd; Returns on Monday, October 6th

Departing from JFK is a preference, not guaranteed. This flight could depart from Newark, NJ (EWR)

Three night accommodations at the Hilton Prague Old Town Hotel

Check in Friday, October 3rd and check out Monday, October 6th

Reserved upper level tickets to the Rangers vs. Lightning game on Saturday 10/4

Reserved upper level tickets to the Rangers vs. Lightning game on Sunday 10/5

Roundtrip deluxe game transfers

Exclusive access to the Rangers’ morning practice on Saturday with Rangers alumni

Prague Castle Tour on Sunday morning

Roundtrip deluxe airport transfers in Prague with porterage

Daily breakfast at the hotel

Official Rangers Deluxe Gift Bag

Premiere Corporate Events staff pre-planning and on-site to assist

Passport required for international travel

All taxes and porterage fees included

Limited number of lower level ticket upgrades available

The Rangers have partnered with Premiere Corporate Events to bring you this once in a lifetime experience.

If nothing else, this at least seems like a better deal because airfare is included

Once again, let’s break this down (remember 1 US Dollar= 17.5 Czech Kuronas).

• Round-trip flight from New York City to Prague on Delta with a stopover: $848 plus fees, taxes, etc. from Priceline.
• Hotel from Friday to Monday: $259.87 per night, or $849.76.
  
• Reserved upper level tickets to both games: Games are sold out, but people I’m assuming are reputable ticket brokers have them as low as the admittedly steep price of $148 a pop.
• A ride to from the airport: $50?
• A ride to the rink: Call it $60. I figured $15 both ways for both nights if it’s on the high side.
• Castle Tour: If you were going by yourself, it’d be $25.70 for the long tour and an English-speaking tour guide.
• Morning skate with Rangers alum: A morning skate costs $6 where I go. But the inclusion of Jeff Beukeboom and Darren Turcotte makes it “Priceless.”
• Breakfast: Assume $60, just like in Sweden.
• Deluxe gift bag: Assume a $50 value, even though it won’t be that much.

That leaves us with a grand total of $2,097.46.

Total markup: $1,527.54, or 72.8 percent. What a steal.

At least the Rangers also offer a package without airfare that costs $2,525. Even if you use the $848 airfare, you still get out cheaper than the deluxe package.

It’s not Penguins-grade price gauging, which was almost 100 percent PLUS airfare, but it’s close.

Once again, I implore you: stay home.

Where hockey fans go to get gouged.

With the Penguins opening this year’s NHL season in Sweden, the Summit Performance group, a do-it-all travel package company (with a remarkably slow website), has cobbled together an incredible deal for Pens fans. Those that wish to visit their beloved team in Stockholm will receive the following:

• 5-Day/4-Nights accommodations at the Nordic Light Hotel(or similar property) in Stockholm, Sweden
• Upper Level Tickets at the Globe Arena to the Penguins season opening games against the Ottawa Senators on October 4th and 5th with bus transfers
• Welcome Reception at Hotel on the Evening of October 2nd
• ½ day Stockholm City Tour
• Breakfast each day at the hotel
• Attendance at a Penguins Practice
• Commemorative Gift
• Summit Performance Group pre and on-site management; Travel with international event and travel experts.

Doesn’t seem like too bad of a trip, except for the whole “upper level ticket” thing. How much does this go for?

The trip package costs $3,062 per person (single occupancy) or $2,250 per person (double occupancy). These prices include VAT and all other taxes.

Wait, how much? Well I mean I guess it could be worse considering the price of airfare these da…

Package does not include air travel to Stockholm, personal items/incidentals and optional excursions. Air travel to Stockholm can be arranged through Summit Performance Group.

WHAT?

Let me get this straight. For $3,000 (and keeping in mind that right this second $1 US dollar= 6.30 Swedish kronors), you get:

• Four nights in an admittedly four-star hotel (No. 14 of 152 in Stockholm, says TripAdvisor. It costs about $350 a night in early October.): $1,400.
• ONE upper-level seat: $65 a night
  
• A welcome reception: Priceless?
• A half-day tour: $65
• A Penguins practice: Free if you can find any NHL team’s practice rink stateside, $15 in Sweden
• Some orange juice and corn flakes: Call it $30-50
• A “commemorative gift:” Who knows?
• Traveling with so-called travel experts: Pricless?

Add that all up — without putting a price on the commemorative gift, the welcome reception, and the travel experts — and get a grand total of (drumroll): $1,660!

Only about 100 percent markup.

Plus airfare, which Hotwire says gets as cheap as $877 roundtrip from Pittsburgh to Stockholm with one stopover.

Even allowing for scalping tickets, which eBay has going as high as about $125 per seat in the LOWER level, this is ridiculous.

Book your own trips, guys, or better yet stay home. The view from your house is gonna be pretty good. Unless the “commemorative gift” is $1,400 cash money, Pens fans are getting robbed blind.