I remember the summer frenzy of 2007. I was in China with my family on vacation and premiering a film.

Free agency opened. I was online checking on what was happening. I was jet lagged to the max.

Conventional wisdom said that we needed a center.

The bidding started.

The New York Rangers went to bat. Bam. They signed Scott Gomez. Bam. They signed Chris Drury.

Bam. The Flyers signed Daniel Briere.

All three were signed to really long term deals. The experts opined on how well these teams did with their signings. I started to get inundated with emails about how we could never improve our team because we were never big players in free agency.

These signings set off a frenzy as we weren’t even close to hitting the bids on these deals.

We eventually signed Michael Nylander to a four year deal as our free agent center. The experts continued to praise. Or critique.

It is now many years later.

It is amazing to me how these deals turned out for all of the teams. Some good and some not-so-good. Free agency is a crap shoot, isn’t it?

It is probably better to opine on the signings after the contract ends to see how the player performed during his tenure.