The last two years, all we have discussed when planning our off season moves is the threat of offer sheets to our young players. We have rebuilt the team around our young players. We are keeping our team together – which is good news – but our young players are all signing deals that look to me like UFA deals all because of the threat of offer sheets. That is a new fact of life that all franchises are living with now in our busy off seasons.
Ted's Take
So we lost a season for another broken system. A lot of the NHL’s recent success is a product of the strong Canadian dollar. A majority of the league revenues come from north of the border. If the Canadian dollar starts to fall, these big player contracts are going to doom some teams.
Wow – owners don’t like other owners who use the system “created by the owners/players” to build a better team in a free market??
Maybe you ought to get together as owners, do more colluding and ban each other from signing RFA’s to offer sheets?!?
Offer sheets, as long as they are within the rules, are a fact of life in the NHL until the CBA changes. Personally, I don’t think much of Kevin Lowe’s ability to build a team (he’s taken a team that was a Cup finalist and destroyed it in about 2 years.) I also think Brian Burke does know what he is doing. The thing is that Lowe didn’t negotiate the CBA, his employer did. That he found a way to allow him to acquire a player from Anaheim due to their cap issues, kudos to him. Is he overpaying the guy? Yeah, but that’s between him and Oilers ownership.
The Caps are doing this the right way, and the team has sound management that will make sure the team is going in the right direction for many years.
It seems to me that all teams have now adjusted to the post-lockout facts of life, and dabbling in the RFA market is a way to somehow “re-draft” with an idea of what a “prospect” can do at the NHL level. But much like the draft, some “prospects” pan out and others don’t, but in this case, it’s a hit to the cap. I suspect that RFA offer sheets will die down in a year or two when the fad wears off as teams see that RFA signings are more miss than hit, given the dollars involved. Nothing beats growing your own talent. Keep working the plan Ted.
But don’t blame Lowe, blame the system… As long as Kevin worked within the system, he should be hung out to dry… And if Burke suggest otherwise, the PA should look into possible collusion