On the Wings

Here’s an update to the Red Wings payroll situation, now considering that renegotiations are not allowed and a $39 million cap. I also updated a few salary numbers and players signed. After reading this analysis you will realize the Wings are actually in good shape. I promise.

Forwards

Kris Draper - $2,800,000 ($2,128,000)
Tomas Holmstrom - $1,800,000 ($1,368,000)
Jiri Hudler - $750,000 ($570,000)
Robert Lang - $5,000,000 ($3,800,000)
Kirk Maltby - $1,900,000 ($1,444,000)
Darren McCarty - $2,250,000 ($1,710,000)
Brendan Shanahan - $3,000,000 ($2,280,000)
Ray Whitney - $3,500,000 ($2,660,000)

Defensemen

Jiri Fischer - $1,750,000 ($1,330,000)
Derian Hatcher - $6,500,000 ($4,940,000)
Nicklas Lidstrom - $10,000,000 ($7,600,000)
Jamie Rivers - $425,000 (*$450,000)
Jason Woolley - $925,000 ($703,000) [UPDATE 7/21 Woolley is a UFA, but signed on TSN?]
Bryan Helmer - $425,000 (*$450,000)

Goalies

Manny Legace - $1,530,000 ($1,162,000)

—-$42,555,000 (*$32,595,000) —-15 players
*24% rollback in parenthesis, minimum salary $450,000

Buyouts

Derian Hatcher (-$4,940,000 = payroll of $27,655,000)
Ray Whitney (-$2,660,000 = payroll of $24,995,000)
Darren McCarty (-$1,710,000 = payroll of $23,285,000)

—-$23,285,000—-12 players

Free Agent Signings (need 11 players - $15,715,000 remaining)

Henrik Zetterberg - $1,750,000
Pavel Datsyuk - $2,000,000
Steve Yzerman - $1,500,000
Jason Williams - $850,000
Niklas Kronwall - $750,000
Mathieu Dandenault - $950,000
Chris Osgood - $2,250,000
Dmitri Bykov - $1,000,000
Johan Franzen - $500,000
Mark Mowers - $550,000

—-Cost of additions: $12,100,000 —- 10 players, 22 total

—-Remaining cap room: $3,615,000, which must include bonuses, insurance, and dental coverage

This leaves enough money for the Wings to acquire a good, second-line scoring forward or to keep Darren McCarty. Buyouts of Derian Hatcher and Ray Whitney are all but a formality. They are gone. Here’s a list of players the Wings could sign with this remaining cap room, to obtain the 23rd and final player. Their last salary is shown in parenthesis, to give some indication of market value.

Skaters:

Long Shots

Jason Allison ($8,000,000, 2003-2004)
Bill Guerin ($6,738,498, 2005-2006)
Sergei Fedorov ($6,080,000, 2005-2006)
Milan Hejduk ($5,700,000, 2004-2005)
Adam Foote ($4,400,000, 2004-2005)
Jason Arnott ($3,850,000, 2004-2005)
Scott Young ($3,462,278, 2003-2004)

Possibilities

Martin Lapointe ($4,000,000, 2004-2005)
Glen Murray ($3,850,000, 2003-2004)
Jeff O’Neill ($3,700,000, 2004-2005)
Adam Deadmarsh ($3,000,000, 2003-2004)
David Legwand ($1,775,000, 2004-2005)
Shawn Horcoff ($850,000, 2004-2005)

Goaltenders:

Long Shots

Mike Dunham ($3,600,000, 2004-2005)
Dan Cloutier ($3,050,000, 2004-2005)
Jocelyn Thibault ($3,100,000, 2004-2005)
Roberto Luongo ($2,400,000, 2004-2005)
Brian Boucher ($2,000,000, 2004-2005)

Possibilities

Byron Dafoe ($3,500,000, 2003-2004)
Manny Fernandez ($2,200,000, 2004-2005)
Garth Snow $1,313,000, 2003-2004)
Felix Potvin ($1,300,000, 2003-2004)

FINAL ROSTER

Centers

Pavel Datsyuk
Jason Williams
Steve Yzerman
Robert Lang
Jiri Hudler
Kris Draper
Johan Franzen

Left Wings

Tomas Holmstrom
Kirk Maltby
Brendan Shanahan
Henrik Zetterberg

Right Wings

Mark Mowers

Defensemen

Jiri Fischer
Nicklas Lidstrom
Jamie Rivers
Jason Woolley
Bryan Helmer
Niklas Kronwall
Mathieu Dandenault
Dmitri Bykov

Goaltenders

Manny Legace
Chris Osgood

23rd man:

Glen Murray or Adam Deadmarsh (Martin Lapointe if we can’t do any better and he comes for a cheap price)

Tuesday, July 19 / Wednesday, July 20

• NHLPA membership meetings
• players debate CBA terms
• 350+ of 700+ players needed for ratification

Thursday, July 21

• NHL Board of Governors meeting
• 2005 Entry Draft lottery held
• 16 of 30 owners needed for ratification
• Official annoucement of the end of the NHL lockout
• CBA terms officially released

Saturday, July 23

• Period for compliance buyouts begins (2/3 buyout doesn’t count against cap)
• Period for signing 2003 draft picks begins
• Period to extend qualifying offers begins
• Period for teams to negotiate with their own restricted and unrestricted free agents begins

Thursday, July 28

• Deadline to exercise team/player options for next season
• Deadline to sign 2003 draft picks (or else they re-enter 2005 draft)
• Deadline to make required, good-faith offers to 2004 draft picks

Friday, July 29

• Deadline for compliance buyouts (buyouts after today will be charged against cap)

Saturday, July 30

• Entry draft held in Ottawa at the Westin Hotel

Sunday, July 31

• Deadline to extend qualifying offers

Monday, August 1

• Free-agent signing period begins

Thanks to ESPN for the dates, and be sure to read Hockey Rodent as he discusses a possible buyout loophole.

UPDATE 7/18 6:15 pm

The player vote will come later than expected. According to USA Today:

“They are to begin arriving in Toronto on Tuesday, get briefed Wednesday and hold a ratification vote Thursday. Phone and Internet accommodations will be made for players who can’t attend.”

So don’t expect a player vote until Thursday. Stan Fischler has an interesting piece today on Goodenow’s Last Stand. As for the owners, the NHL is briefing teams on the terms of the CBA in groups early this week in anticipation of a vote on Thursday.

UPDATE 7/18 10:29 pm

Dates are being pushed back. The NHL is now planning its Board of Governors meeting for Friday in New York, where they will hold a ratification vote, entry draft lottery, and the news conference to announce the end of the lockout. As updated above, the NHLPA will hold their ratification vote on Thursday in Toronto, after two days of briefing and debate on the deal. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, NHL executive vice-president and chief legal officer Bill Daly, as well as NHLPA leadership will be available to the media following the all-important player vote on Thursday.

Chris Chelios:

“It’s all about the lies and separating the players from the league and making us look bad because we have to defend ourselves. And that alone should be just cause for him (Gary Bettman) to get the gas after this is all done.”

Considering Bettman’s Jewish heritage, that already ridiculous comment is even more inflammatory. If the players want to earn people’s respect back, that’s not the route to take. Read Shanahan’s take on it below.

Ken Holland:

“I’ve got to get that CBA. I’ve got to know how it affects me. I’ve got to know what I can do…Obviously, the first order of business is to learn the CBA as quickly as possible. I mean, they’re going to put down something in front of us that’s going to be an inch thick, and it’s going to be all the rules that govern what we can and can’t do and how we run our business. Everybody in our organization is going to have a copy of that thing…Obviously, my hope is Steve wants to play one more year, and my hope is we can figure out something that works. At the same time, when it comes to every player, they’ve got to be paid fairly…We’re going into a new world, and I can’t be paying any players on potential, and it’s hard to be paying any players on past service. Your players have to kind of be paid based on what he can contribute to the team. We’ve never dealt in a cap world before. Going into the new world, we’re going to have to have some younger, cheaper players in the six, seven spot on defense, on the fourth line, in the 13th forward. That’s what’s going to kind of allow you to have some top-end players.”

Mike Ilitch:

“It’s brand new, and you can easily mess up. And (if) you mess up, the fines are going to be heavy. It can get disastrous if you don’t comprehend everything and follow the rules…It gets everybody’s competitive juices going. In other words, if we gotta scout harder, if we gotta go around the world five times and I’ve gotta have 25 scouts added…whatever you gotta do. Because you can’t train these people that fast, you gotta groom them like every other business. We’re confident that we can do a good job. We’ve got a good nucleus. We’ve been there before, and I think we’re going to be OK.”

Kris Draper:

“I do have a job again. I think the one thing as a player, you realize that we missed a whole year of playing hockey, a whole year off our career, so you are excited to be back playing…The one thing is, now it’s very easy to sit back and say, we should have done this, done that, why we didn’t we do more in September and August. I’m not going to second-guess this whole process. I’m disappointed we had to lose the whole season of hockey. But our committee put in 80 some meetings to get a deal done, to get hockey back, and that’s what they did…Us as players, we realize that the end is in sight, so we have to wait and see what happens. Everyone calls it a ‘whole new world’ and we know there are going to be some changes. The one thing we have to realize is it was an owner’s lockout. But we’re going to get back to playing, and everyone is excited about that. There’s been a lot of damage to the sport, and us as players are committed to bringing an exciting new product to everybody.”

Brendan Shanahan:

“There will be hurt feelings from fans and some players for a while, but the best way to heal is to play great hockey, to give more to the fans. The players and the owners made this mess ourselves, and shame on us if we don’t learn from it. Instead of assessing blame or offering apologies, we’ve got to concentrate on putting a better product on the ice…It doesn’t serve any purpose for any smack talk from either side. I don’t think fans are interested in hearing any more fighting. I’m sure there will be some players that express anger and frustration, but at this point, the majority of the guys just want to get back on the ice.”

Jimmy Devellano:

“We’ve got to roll up our sleeves because we’re going to be on a new planet for this franchise. We’ll have to work with the new system, we’ll have to adjust to it and we’ll have to learn how to win with it. We’re beefing up our scouting and player development. Nobody can predict if there’s any real serious damage done, but I think fans will jump back on board here in Detroit…I do think (suffering through the lockout) was worth it because it was needed, and more teams will survive because of it. That said, you’re not going to see us trading first-round picks to get a big-salary star at the trade deadline anymore.”

Don Cherry, co-host of Coaches Corner on HNIC:

“No doubt who won this contest. The Players’ Association got a home run in 1994 and they tried to hit a home run now and they should have settled for a double or a single because there was no way they were going to beat the owners this time…They underestimated the owners’ resolve and they pay the price now and they pay a big price…They’ve got to remember the guy who gave them the moon (for player’s bashing Goodenow). You’ve got to cut him some slack for that…For the league to lose $2 billion dollars and be the only professional league in North America to be out for a year, it was Armageddon as far as I am concerned. But I believe it will make the league and the franchises stronger. We had to have Armageddon to get them. Teams like Edmonton and Calgary are going to be all the stronger…To tell you the truth, I think some of them shouldn’t be in the league in the first place. I hate to say that because players will lose their jobs, but I really believe the league will be a lot stronger, definitely franchises are going to be stronger and if we lose a couple of those weak sister franchises, then let them go…After a year, I got so much to say I can hardly wait to hear myself (on the next Coach’s Corner).”

Colin Campbell, NHL executive vice president and director of hockey operations:

“It’s a combination of rule suggestions that were submitted to help the game, change the game to make it better. But none of it has been even close to ratified. It hasn’t even been ratified from within yet, the managers haven’t ratified it, the players haven’t ratified it, and it hasn’t been given to the board of governors yet to ratify - which is always the final step. So people are jumping the gun. Sure they are suggestions but none of these things are ready to go…All of our rule recommendations have gone public. They weren’t meant to go public. But various media have taken them public either from a management source or a player source. Which is fine, but people should know these are not written in stone.”

Bobby Hull, former NHL great:

“I’m not so sure (the players) got proper guidance from the guy running the Players’ Association (Bob Goodenow). You can’t fight fire with fire when the flame on the other side is a heck of a lot hotter and a heck of a lot bigger. They should’ve realized hockey couldn’t go on the way it was. You can’t have 75 per cent of your outlay (going) into salaries and they should’ve realized that. They milked the old cow until she was dry and there was no more left in her. A lot of guys thought that they could go on and go on and that they were that important but they found out differently…Oh sure. They were a bunch of spoiled millionaires against billionaires and a lot of egos have to be stroked. When that happens you have problems as they did…I think he’ll play again but Brett had a chance of becoming the second-leading goal-scorer overall next to (Wayne) Gretzky and overtaking Gordie Howe and I think he has hard feelings about that and I can understand that. If he had had two pretty good years he could’ve become the second-highest scorer and now it’s doubtful.”

Darryl Sutter, Flames head coach:

“We don’t know what all goes into that number that we’re hearing. Is it just salary? Is it performance? Is it signing? I mean there’s a lot of things that go into that. Until we see that actual document and see that number we’ll - just like you - try and guess where we are…You know we call it a budget but now they’re going to call it a cap. What it does is, we’ve said all along we need a system that brings everybody onto sort of a level playing field and hopefully this will do that…The only thing we’re not ready for is where we pick. We already did our sort in terms of where we think we’ll pick but until we see the actual positioning that’s it…I can’t speak for 29 other teams. I can only speak for the Calgary Flames and I know the relationship our players have with our owners and the owners have with our players. To me it’s not even a relevant issue. As I said before our players focus and our focus is to try and keep the group together.”

Brian Burke, Mighty Ducks GM (TSN video):

“I think jubilation is going to be the reaction all around professional hockey, around the world. This is a huge day for the National Hockey League. We have to temper it with the realization the deal still has to be ratified by the players and approved by the Board of Governors. So it’s not time maybe to have a parade, but it’s certainly time to start picking out the route. And I do want to salute the people who have worked around the clock the last few weeks on the NHL and NHLPA side for working their tails of to get a deal done…We have not received a term sheet from the NHL…We have not been fully informed as this has gone along. The teams should have been kept in the dark to faciliate this process…If, in fact, there’s a cap, this may come as news to some GMs - it’s not news to me. I’ve had a cap for the last six years I was a manager: it’s called a budget. And the fact that now some guys are going to have a budget - that might be revolutionary or radical to them, it not to me…

I think what you’ll see is an increased emphasis on pro scouting. If teams are going to have to get under a cap number, whatever that number is, I think they’re gonna have to be right more than they are wrong on trades. You’re gonna see teams beef up their staffs on the pro scouting side - because that’s gonna be the future of the game. Drafting guys with liberalized free agency is not going to be as critical as being able to sign guys when they do become free agents…Well anyone who’s starting to do it today (prepare for post-CBA NHL) hasn’t been paying attention. In terms of if there are massive buyouts of guys who are overpaid - you should’ve been preparing that list a week ago…This will be the first time that GM’s are competing on a somewhat equal footing. And I welcome that, I think that’s good for our league. I think what Gary Bettman has done here is good for our league…We’re all going to be
scrambling like madmen for the next 60 days, but thank God that we are because that means we’re going back on the ice in September.”

J.S. Giguere, Mighty Ducks (TSN video):

Well it’s worth it because the league was broken and it needed to be fixed. Honestly, we believe in the strategy at first, and maybe it didn’t hold up as good as we thought, but I think at the end of the day, for the better of the game, this deal’s going to be good. Now we’re going to be a partnership with the owners…I think what they have come up with, with the 11-inch pad and the rest being a little bit more trim (goalie equipment), I think that’s the right thing to do. Goalies are becoming bigger and better.”

Jason Spezza, Ottawa (TSN video):

“We put trust in the people that were in charge, and that’s all you can do. There’s no point in doubting their authority. The guys that are on the executive committee are guys that I trust…As young guys that’s what we do…it’s a natural progress…I’m sure they got the best deal that they could possibly get, and I’m not going to doubt them one bit…We knew that things had to be re-structured…It’s reality that we have made money in the last few years, and maybe too much.

Jeremy Roenick, Flyers (TSN video):

“I’m ecstatic. And I’m ecstatic because I don’t give a sh*t what the deal is. I’m just happy we’re going to get the game back on the ice, and we’re gonna have a season and the fans are gonna love coming back to our game and we’re gonna make it better for everyone to come watch. And I heard you guys talking about the draft. I think they should just give the New York Rangers the number one pick and let Sidney Crosby play in one of the biggest markets in the United States…

I think we were fighting against a losing battle the whole way. The owners had an agenda, and they knew what they could accept and what they couldn’t accept. The players have made a lot of money in the last ten years, and they (the owners) needed a forum that was going to make more money for them…the smaller markets are going to make so much money, and it’s about time. It’s been too lopsided for the last ten years…I think there’s going to be a gold statue outside the NHL offices in New York City and Toronto, with Gary Bettman’s face on it. He’s represented their side extremely well, and I think Bob Goodenow has had the right intensions in mind and the right idea in mind, however we were fighting against a different animal than we were in ‘94. In my opinion, we were fighting against a losing battle. I have no hard feelings for that, they’ve worked as hard as they possibly can…now is not the time to start pointing fingers.”

Glenn Healy (TSN video):

“Well I think there had to be a correction, and basically it’s a money transfer. Money has been transferred from the players to the owners. The players made money for ten years. They stood on principle for a long time, in fact that’s what you do in a union…It’s a much better deal today, as it sits, than the one in February. These guys have been working tirelessly nonstop, 80 hours a week for six straight weeks. The deal in February could not have got done, history shows that…Bob does not endorse this deal…Bob doesn’t endorse the cap, however he has no choice. He works for the players, they’re the ones who endorse the cap.”

Ian Laperriere, Avs:

“salary cap is the worst thing for players…teams are going to change so fast…you wont see a third or forth liner stay with the same team for ten years”

Ethan Moreau, Edmonton:

“We’ve been compensated probably better than any professional sport in the world, so if you had the opportunity to play in the NHL for the last ten years, your first call should be to Bob to thank him for the last ten years.”

Wayne Gretzky, Coyotes owner/future coach:

“At the end of the day everybody lost. We almost crippled our industry. It was very disappointing what happened.”

Jim Rutherford, Hurricanes GM:

“I don’t want to get to the relief point yet until everything’s finalized. What we went through was necessary. We had to get some controls on our business and certainly I’m hoping that’s what this new agreement does.”

Brendan Morrison, Canucks:

“I think guys will rise above what happened for the good of the game (but) there’s resentment throughout the union. I’ll guarantee you half the guys won’t be happy.”

Head over to Sharkspage or Off Wing for amazing coverage since the story broke early this afternoon.