Skip navigation

 Login or Register | Member Centre

Wharnsby: McCrimmon heading for Motown

Tim Wharnsby, 22/07/08 at 12:31 AM EDT

With the departure of new Los Angeles Kings coach Terry Murray from the Philadelphia Flyers coaching staff, it would have been a natural fit for Brad McCrimmon to return to the Flyers. Instead, look for McCrimmon to join his old Philadelphia defence partner Mark Howe, who now works for the Detroit Red Wings as a pro scout.

That's right, McCrimmon will replace Todd McLellan as an assistant coach in Detroit. McLellan, of course, is the San Jose Sharks' new head coach.

Wharnsby: Hagman gets a familiar perk

Tim Wharnsby, 18/07/08 at 12:25 PM EDT

When the Toronto Maple Leafs signed unrestricted free-agent Niklas Hagman to a four-year, $12-million (U.S.) contract earlier this month, it went undetected that the Finn has a no-movement clause in the first year of his pact.

Although, it's only for the 2008-09 season, it's a bit surprising since the way the Leafs were hamstrung by similar contracts of Bryan McCabe, Pavel Kubina, Tomas Karberle, Mats Sundin and Darcy Tucker last season.

Hagman, 28, scored a career high 27 goals and 41 points in 82 games for the Dallas Stars last season.

Wharnsby: Storm expected to promote Brooks to head coach

Tim Wharnsby, 15/07/08 at 8:28 PM EDT

With long-time Guelph Storm general manager-coach Dave Barr off to join the Colorado Avalanche as an assistant coach, the Storm are expected to soon promote long-time assistant coach Jason Brooks as the OHL club's new head coach.

Wharnsby: Frogren's contract still up in the air

Tim Wharnsby, 15/07/08 at 8:22 PM EDT

The grievance hearing has yet to be scheduled between the NHLPA and NHL over whether the Swedish defenceman Jonas Frogren should be signed to a entry-level contract or not by the Toronto Maple Leafs. The players' union contends that because Frogren is 28 years old he should not be subjected to the restrictions of an entry-level pact.

Frogren, 28, will begin the season being paid under the commitment of the two-year, $2.13-million (all currency U.S.) deal originally signed by the two sides last week. The Swede's contract includes a $755,000 signing bonus and salaries of $475,000 this season and $900,000 in 2009-10.

Wharnsby: Cherry's Hewitt wait

Tim Wharnsby, 09/07/08 at 9:25 AM EDT

Don Cherry will be inducted into the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame in Parry Sound, Ont. this Saturday, along with Orr's father, the late Doug Orr, Parry Sound native and former Clarkson University hockey player Jim Mathews and Special Olympian Tim Vancoughnett, also from Parry Sound.

How long will it be before Cherry is honoured with the Hall of Fame's Foster Hewitt Memorial Award, a lifetime achievement honour for hockey broadcasters as voted on by the NHL broadcasters association?

If you take a glance at the list of winners for the 25-year-old Hewitt Award, it has been bestowed mainly on play-by-play announcers. There were two exceptions, Brian McFarlane and Howie Meeker, were named the Hewitt Award winners in 1995 and 1998, respectively. It's time that not only Cherry, 74, join the group, but more analysts in the future.

Wharnsby: Kelly confirms Wrigley game

Tim Wharnsby, 07/07/08 at 5:44 PM EDT

Before NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly flew over to Zurich to take another shot at finding a player transfer agreement that works for all sides, he attended and spoke at the monthly luncheon of the NHL Original Six old-timers.

In his address, Kelly confirmed reports that the NHL will indeed announce this week that the New Year's Day outdoor game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings will be held at Wrigley Field and he also opined that rather than expansion to places like Las Vegas and Kansas City, the NHL should look at putting one or two of its troubled franchises in Southwestern Ontario and Winnipeg.

Detroit senior vice-president Jim Devellano also was in attendance, receiving pats on the back for another championship season. In his 41 NHL seasons, Devellano has 13 championship rings: seven Stanley Cups (N.Y. Islanders 1980, '81, '82 and Detroit '97, '98, '02 and ‘08), three AHL Calder Cup championships with Adirondack  (1986, 1989 and 1992), two Adams Cup championships in the Central Hockey League (Fort Worth 1978 and Indianapolis '82), and one Riley Cup title in the ECHL (Toledo 1994).

Devellano also has a Major League Baseball American League Championship with the 2006 Detroit Tigers. In June 2001, Wings-Tigers owner Mike Ilitch named Devellano senior vice-president of the Tigers.

Duhatschek: A done deal

Eric Duhatschek, 04/07/08 at 1:12 PM EDT

It took some middle-of-the-night negotiations to get the language in the contract clarified, but eventually Jaromir Jagr did sign off on a deal with Russia's Avangard Omsk, which announced the coup on its website earlier today.

On Friday, Jagr's agent Pat Brisson confirmed that Jagr had signed “a letter of intent to play with Avangard Omsk Hockey team of the Russian CHL on or about 3 AM EST this morning.” In an email note, Brisson said: “I won't comment on the terms of the agreement at this time. It was a very difficult but personal decision to make in light of the many NHL teams interested in his services. He is grateful to the NHL and especially the Rangers in recent years."

Russia's Continental League was trying to sign a marquee player in its first year, supplanting the old Superleague, and Jagr seemed to their best hope of getting a player with star power to commit. The Rangers dropped out of negotiations Thursday after signing Markus Nilsson, but left the door open a crack, in case – as GM Glen Sather put it – things don't work out in Russia.

Brisson wouldn't go into details on the dollar value of the deal, but sources indicated the Russian contract will pay Jagr in the neighborhood of $6 to $7 million U.S. per season. The number that had been bandied about – three years, $35 million – is an extrapolation and this requires some explanation. The contracts that players sign in Russia are virtually tax free, meaning that if Jagr signs for $7 million, that'll be $7 million in his pocket. To get $7 million in his pocket, he would need to sign an NHL deal worth between $10 and $12 million per season, depending upon the tax laws in the state or province in which he plays – which is why these offers sound so big. The actual Russian tax rate is about 17 per cent; the teams generally cover the cost themselves, so the players net the entire gross amount of their contracts. It's like the Brick paying the GST on your Canada Day purchase – a nice arrangement if you can get it. Meanwhile, on the Dan Boyle front, that deal isn't official either – although sources continue to insist that the San Jose Sharks are the front-runners and will likely land him at some point later today, as they are Boyle's team of choice, in waiving a no-trade clause in the six-year, $40 million contract he signed with the Tampa Bay Lightning last February.


 

Wharnsby: Classy guy

Tim Wharnsby, 04/07/08 at 1:01 PM EDT

Classy guy, that Dan Boyle. He swiftly weighed his options when Tampa Bay Lightning's ownership approached him about waiving his no-trade clause. He now finds himself still in a good situation with a contender, the San Jose Sharks.

If Boyle of Ottawa, Ont. doesn't approach this prickly predicament with an open mind and instead takes a hard-line stance, his immediate future becomes may not be as rosy. Difficult to dispute that Bryan McCabe wouldn't be better off he adopted the same outlook in his messy situation with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Duhatschek: Sharks land another big fish

Eric Duhatschek, 04/07/08 at 11:10 AM EDT

Exceedingly tight-lipped about the machinations of his hockey club, San Jose Sharks' general manager Doug Wilson isn't one to tip his hand normally, but on Thursday night, after signing defenceman Rob Blake as a replacement for Brian Campbell, he did so in a way. When asked if he were finished retooling his hockey club, Wilson was uncharacteristically candid:

``I don't think we are done,” he said. “There is a long time before we start playing games. Every day we're looking at ways to get people. ... There are a lot of things we're still talking about."

That observation – and another, in which Wilson talked about a theme emerging in his off-season moves, bringing in a coach, Todd McLellan, who had recently won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings, and a player, Blake, who'd won before with the Colorado Avalanche, certainly foreshadowed his next move Friday morning - to acquire Dan Boyle from the Tampa Bay Lightning for a package of players that will reportedly included defenceman Matt Carle.

Sources confirmed to globesports.com. that Boyle had indeed waived the six-year, $40 million he signed with the Lightning back in February, just before the trading deadline, a deal that the new ownership group of Oren Koules and Len Barrie signed off on. Despite the big numbers on the contract, the Lightning was able to auction off Boyle's rights to a handful of teams, one of them, Ottawa, which dropped out early when the Senators saw how high the bidding would go.
In Boyle, the Lightning add yet another former Stanley Cup champion to the roster of a team that has a history of coming up short in the playoffs.

Boyle was an integral part of Tampa's 2004 championship team and although 31, possesses many of the same qualities as Campbell, a reputable offensive defenceman who had his most recent season marred by a skate slash to the wrist that severed a tendon. In the four seasons prior to that, he'd averaged 52 points per year and in the Stanley Cup run, added 16 points in 23 games. With Boyle, Blake, Craig Rivet, plus youngsters Christian Ehrhoff, Douglas Murray and Marc-Eduard Vlasci, the Sharks now boast one of the deepest defence corps in the league – provided of course the two sides hammer out the details of the trade, which is expected to happen in the next couple of hours.

Duhatschek: Gotta love that Brian Burke

Eric Duhatschek, 03/07/08 at 11:51 AM EDT

Gotta love that Brian Burke. Just when you think the war of words between the Anaheim Ducks general manager and his Edmonton Oilers counterpart, Kevin Lowe, is dying down, Burke re-ignites the controversy by blaming the rise in player salaries among the NHL's youngest players on Lowe. In an interview published by the Los Angeles Times, Burke said: “You go right now from entry-level to what used to be the third contract, thanks to two offer sheets from Kevin Lowe. Most managers don't' like starting fights with any other managers. Thanks to the Edmonton Oilers, the second contract has disappeared.”

Burke continued: “They're all being re-signed at inflated prices. Everything I said a year ago has come true. Every single word.”

Well, yes and no. Sometimes, you need to probe a little deeper when Burke goes off on a rant. First of all, Lowe wasn't the first general manager to reward a player coming out of the entry-level system with a generous, long-term contract extension. Doug MacLean, then with the Columbus Blue Jackets, did the same for Rick Nash back in the summer of 2005. As the NHL was coming out of the lockout, MacLean gave Nash, then just 21, a five-year, $27-million contract extension that, in the era of the $39 million salary cap, seemed an outrageously generous deal to many of his contemporaries, who grumbled long and loudly about it. The Blues Jackets back-loaded the contract, which came in at a cap figure of $5.4 million, so that Nash will receive $6.5 million and $7 million in the two years remaining on the deal, at which point he will become a free agent at 26. At the time, the contract caused a stir among GMs for the exact reasons Burke implied above - Nash had no arbitration rights coming out his first contract, so why give him so much money when you don't have to. It was widely believed that the Blue Jackets could have gotten Nash for a lot less – and that when one 21-year-old cashed in at that level, others would want to do the same. MacLean justified the deal at the time by calling Nash the “best young player in the world” and in hindsight, it probably wasn't a bad contract, given how the salary cap has jumped and how the new system evolved. And the reason for giving him $7 million in Year 5 of the contract was to buy out Nash's first year of eligibility for unrestricted free agency, for which they had to pay a premium.

Remember, the most controversial concession the owners ceded to the players coming out of the lockout was dropping the age of free agency from 31 to 25. That CBA clause, more than anything Lowe did by trying to poach Thomas Vanek or Dustin Penner as restricted free agents, was the primary reason why young players are getting so much money right now.

If a team wanted to play hardball with its kids, it still has the right to do so. Nothing has fundamentally changed on that front. A team can still tender a qualifying offer to any young player coming out of his first contract and if the team doesn't want to negotiate beyond that, the player's option is take-it-or-leave it.

But – and this is the big but - every manager has to weigh the consequences of negotiating hard on the second contract against the real possibility that if they do so, the player will almost certainly exit – stage right – as soon as he is contractually allowed to do so. So that's the primary reason why Mike Richards received a 15-year commitment from Philadelphia and Alex Ovechkin got 12 years from Washington. Teams are scared to death that they'll invest time, effort and draft choices in these young players and then lose them for nothing at the ripe old age of 25. That's not Lowe's fault. That's the way the CBA was written – and the owners signed off on it, with their eyes wide open. The reality is, under the current CBA, players get just a shade over 56 per cent of hockey-related revenues (HRR); how they divide that number amongst themselves is their own problem, not Kevin Lowe's.