SAW VI

We know Oren Koules and Len Barrie like horror films. After all, Koules is the producer behind the ‘Saw’ franchise, a series of gruesome Hollywood movies centered around pain and torture. And Barrie’s NHL career statistics of 19 goals in 184 games would have to be considered more nightmare than dream.

We just didn’t know that for their next project, the owners of the Tampa Lightning were going to butcher their own roster.

A team that was a Stanley Cup champion only five years ago has turned into a dysfunctional mess and if you believe recent newspaper reports, a potential candidate for contraction.

And now, with the possible trading of Vincent Lecavalier a mere six months after signing the star center to a massive 11-year contract extension, we could very well be approaching the climax to this nauseating script.

Moving one of the top ten talents in hockey for spare parts (which is what the rumoured Montreal package of Chris Higgins, Tomas Plekanec, Josh Gorges and draft picks is) would be positively frightening for any Lightning fans out there and a clear signal to every other NHL player that Tampa Bay is a certified hockey wasteland. The team will have to overpay any player it hopes to sign (Koules and Barrie already seem to have a firm grasp of this concept) because no one with a decent option is going to be interested in working under these conditions.

The chaos began when Barrie and Koules purchased the Lightning last summer and promptly lured Barry Melrose out of the broadcast booth, mothballs and all, and gave him the coaching duties, continuing their Hollywood theme. Melrose hadn’t been behind any type of bench in 15 years, and the choice was widely criticized and questioned, but it did provide many headlines and much media attention for the Lightning and their new owners.

From there, free agent winger Ryan Malone received a seven-year contract at first-line money despite the fact that he put up Alexei Ponikarovsky type numbers playing alongside Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. But hey, at least they got his pro-scout father, Greg Malone, as part of the deal too! Days later the Lightning added Radim Vrbata on a deal that his agent must have accepted in about 0.2 seconds. For 3 years and $9 million the Lightning got a guy who had frustrated coaches and teammates with play that was inconsistent and lacked intensity, a guy who would be joining his fifth team in seven seasons.

And on and on it went. They brought back Vaclav Prospal for $3.5 million a year when there was no obvious place for him to play at that salary, and continued the science project by inking aging veterans Gary Roberts and Mark Recchi, both of whom were healthy scratches at times last year. They re-signed forward Chris Gratton, who is 33 going on 50, and spent more than twice what they pay their starting goalie to add Olaf Kolzig as a 38 year-old back-up.

To alleviate the burden of having five forwards eating up $25 million in cap space, Tampa strong-armed All-Star defenceman Dan Boyle into waiving his no-trade clause and accepting a move to San Jose that was nothing more than a salary-dump.

At this time Jay Feaster, the man who put together the Stanley Cup winning roster, was still the acting GM, but was noticeably absent during the press conferences that announced the various moves and signings. Feaster would resign from his position on July 11th after being left to blow in the wind while the new guys took hands-on ownership to Jerry Jones like levels.

To top it off, Barrie, Koules and new GM Brian Lawton dealt for Ottawa defenceman Andrej Meszaros two weeks before training camp and met his outrageous contract demands, handing over another $4 million a season to a player who peaked four years ago as a rookie.

The off-season roster reconstruction was fascinating and for the most part illogical, but that was only Act I.

Ownership forced Melrose to keep the first overall pick from the draft, Steven Stamkos, on the roster and insisted he be given minutes that he clearly wasn’t ready for. Melrose wanted to send the 18 year-old prospect back to junior hockey, but Barrie, Koules and the Tampa marketing department had already heavily featured Stamkos in team promotions and weren’t about to be told what to do.

Just 16 games into the new season, Melrose and his famously coiffed hair were kicked to the curb, replaced by Rick Tocchet, who had a starring role in ‘Operation Slapshot’. Tocchet may very well turn out to be a good or even great NHL coach, but giving him the head job only months after completing a league-mandated suspension was a curious way to calm the waters.

And on and on it has gone. Vrbata was re-assigned to my beer-league team, where he has four goals and is minus-14 in 20 games. He won’t go into the corners in our league either and we don’t even allow hitting. (I made that up, he’s actually playing but not competing in the Czech league.) Gratton was sent down to the AHL in December, and Matt Carle, the only roster player the Lightning received in the Boyle trade, has already been shipped out to Philadelphia.

The Lecavalier blockbuster, if it does go down, will no doubt be positioned in Tampa as a necessary way to re-build a struggling roster, but anyone with a reasonable outlook will see it for what it really is: another salary dump with another bit of malice mixed in. Koules and Barrie allegedly promised Lecavalier they would not trade him before his full no-trade clause kicked in following the season, but as their six month track record as NHL owners has shown, their words are as hollow as their movies.

Speaking of which, according to IMDB, Saw VI is scheduled for release in 2009, and by the looks of things in Tampa, it could be coming out any day now.

The NHL's Slippery Slope

Another day, another lucrative, long-term contract generously served up by a league that obviously can't (or won't) help itself.

This time Vinny Lecavalier is the recipient and will earn $8.556 Million as a 38 year-old playing out the final year of his (rumoured) 9 year $77M contract. In the year 2018.

That massive deal follows in the footsteps of several other recent signings (sidebar on the right) that indicate NHL general managers are collectively changing the way they do business. Or they're all crazy. Has to be one of the two.

Are teams simply hoping the salary cap will continue to increase, year-after-year, without any recourse? Do they think by the time the last few remaining years of those deals come around, the cap will be $75M or $100M and the contract will actually look cheap? Can they automatically assume that one or two good seasons is enough to project a player's production 5 or 10 years down the line?

It's a nice thought, but...what if that doesn't happen? What if the annual salary cap, after rising a whopping 35% in 4 years, levels off and then a guy you've committed 7 or 8 years and $40-50M to doesn't fulfill expectations? Even worse, what if you have two guys like that? Or three?

It's a dark road the NHL is traveling down, and it's the same trail the NBA burned in the late 90's that lead to people like Jim McIlvane, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, and Austin Croshere earning some $127 million (combined) in salary. This is great news if you're Jeff Finger or Ron Hainsey or any other marginal player who may (or may not) have upside, but for everyone else it means bad times. Unless you cheer for Detroit, each contract from here on out has the potential to bury your franchise for the foreseeable future.

The NBA owners forced a lockout in 1999 not only to put a cap on player salaries, but also to implement the maximum length a contract could run. Teams were doling out 8, 10, even 12 year deals to stars and that in turn increased contract duration expectations around the league. Eager to keep young players away from free agency, GM's began paying on potential instead of production, and tacked on extra years without hesitation.

Remember the deals handed to Larry Johnson, Juwan Howard, Glenn Robinson and numerous other players who were either too young or still unproven? Remember the kind of damage they did to their respective teams?

Larry Johnson 12 years/$84M - 1994
Glenn Robinson 10 years/$68M - 1995
Donyell Marshall 9 years/$42M - 1994
Juwan Howard 7 years/$105M - 1996
Jayson Williams 7 years/$100M - 1999
Brian Grant 7 years/$84M - 2000
Vin Baker 6 years/$86.7M - 1997
Tim Thomas 6 years/$67M - 1999
Bryant Reeves 6 years/$65M - 1997
Antonio McDyess 6 years/$67M - 1998
Tom Gugliotta 6 years/$58.5M - 1998

In a few short years the entire landscape of the NBA changed. Instead of trading players you traded contracts. Where once you had almost every team competing, legitimately trying to win night in and night out, with most having a realistic shot of at least qualifying for the playoffs when training camp opened...all of a sudden you had a clear set of contenders and an equally clear set of pretenders who were fed to the lions and playing for the lottery from day one.

The NBA finally realized guaranteeing several tens of millions of dollars to athletes for a decade or more at a time, regardless of their performance, wasn't working out that well. Didn't exactly lead to motivation. Another factor was injuries. So they capped the length a contract could run for, and proceeded to shorten it again in the next round of CBA negotiating.

It was noted hockey genius Charles Wang who started this particular movement in the NHL, but it wasn't when he gave Rick Dipietro a 15 year contract in 2003. It actually began two years earlier when Wang signed (ahem) Alexei Yashin (10 years/$87.5M) and the Capitals inked Jaromir Jagr (7 years/$77M) to enormous contracts that neither player came close to playing out. In fact, both were paid to leave. Washington ate nearly half of Jagr's contract while he was wearing a Rangers jersey ($3.4M/year), and seven long years from now the Islanders will have squandered $17M in cap space for Yashin to stay home and continue not caring about hockey. Good investments?

In the years since we've seen several hockey players sign ridiculously long contracts and the situation is now unfolding just as it did in basketball. At first it's the stars: the hottest free agents and the best young players score huge extended deals. The rationale is obviously a move to circumvent the cap (more years at less dollars), and also, in the case of restricted free agents, to keep them away from other teams.

The problem isn't with the superstars getting big paydays, it's the length it comes with, and the effect that has on what everyone else can then demand.

As we look back on the recent history of the NBA, we can see the immediate future for the NHL. And it's not a pretty sight.