There have been a lot of headlines since the start of free agency on July 1st. But the recent attempt of the Oilers to sign Thomas Vanek is something too outrageous to make up. GM Kevin Lowe of Edmonton offered restricted free agent Vanek a seven year, 50 million dollar contract. No, that isn’t a typo nor a product of my horrible grammatical prose. The kicker is that in addition to the heavy salary, Edmonton would have to give up four first round draft picks because Vanek is a restricted free agent. No one outside of Crosby is worth that kind of price and I’d bet Buffalo may have even considered letting him go. However Buffalo has already taken it’s punishment with the loss of both co-captains and promptly announced that they’ve matched the offer.
May I be the first to suggest that Francois Giguere offer Milan Hejduk to Edmonton for Andrew Cogliano and ten first round draft picks.
I’d like to welcome today’s guest columnist Dario to the cheap seats. He’ll be doing some occasional writing here and I, for one, am looking forward to more of his work!
Thanks for the bullhorn DD.
Cool, Nice first post Dario….
And I agree not only was that a ridiculous contract offer, but Regier was an idiot of taking it.
Enh, the way things are going right now, Vanek is worth what was offered. And Buffalo obviously agreed. The Oilers just got Vanek the money he would have gotten if he were a UFA. Get used to this, because it’s just going to be how things work in the new NHL. I (and many others) have just been waiting for this to happen. I hope we see more of this.
personally, I’m not all that anxious to see an increase in RFA activity. It probably won’t have a lot of player movement. Instead, it will just inflate salaries even further. Remember when trying to poach top guys was all the rage? Sakic to the Rangers? Fedorov to the Hurricanes? All that happened there was that clubs were forced to give their top players a big raise. If there was more movement as a result, I might be more interested.
By the way, Wolski is an RFA next year and Stastny and Budaj are RFAs the following year. Better get the checkbook ready, Giguere.
It’s not the money that was that insane, that was a little high, but not that bad… but Lowe esentially offered that much money AND 4 first round draft picks, which is where the contract becomes really insane. Sorry If someone offered that much for Budaj i’d say “Thanks for the good seasons Peter… good luck”
Jibble has it right. That salary over that length of time that isn’t very front loaded is high. Especially for a guy that played with two stacked lines to take pressure off. It was a big role of the dice. Once you throw in four first round draft picks, that’s just flat out crazy. Vanek wouldn’t be able to carry Edmonton in the stronger Western Conference and they would continue to suffer anyway. In fact, even if they sacrificed their budget on Vanek and drafted right (without their next four 1st round picks mind you) they might just get their head above water in three or four years.
In the meantime the Sabers would not only have their first round picks but four first round picks of Edmonton (who would likely get very high picks even with Vanek). The next four draft years are stacked, not to mention that in 2009 John Tavares is on the board and he might just be every bit as good as Crosby.
The problem with Wolski, Stastny and Budaj is that their qualifying RFA offers won’t deliver the 4 1st round picks unless the bidding for their services goes over 4 million. FG should probably save his cap space for early contract extensions rather than sign Forsberg with the way things look.