I think Ray Shero’s done a good job in Pittsburgh identifying depth and role players on the cheap to fit in his oversized contracts. Sykora was an amazing signing for a couple of seasons, Guerin looks solid, Dupuis has been about as good as he can be. Hal Gill was a cheap top 4 option that gets a lot of flak but did exactly what they needed him to do.

They’ve got the talent locked down, and hard work can be found on the cheap all around the league if one knows where to look. The two combined are pretty potent.

Saying “They might have stone hands, but man do they work with them” with regards to the Leafs might seem like a backhanded compliment, but in my mind it’s an essential part of the equation for a winning team. All we need now is for Kessel/Kadri/Gustavsson to not bust on us, and maybe one big free agent signing, and we’re covered.

Hopefully that’s not too much to ask.

I’m sorry, but Chicago currently only have 16 players under contract for next season and they are $3.8 million over the freaking salary cap.

They have to have 24 or 25 players under contract next season, and they need to CUT salary… how the hell do you think that’s likely to happen? They can’t sign prospects to play for NEGATIVE income.

If they lose Byfuglien, Sharp, Sopel, and Burish, they only save $9,233,333 million under the cap. That puts them $5,351,998 under the cap… with 13 players under contract. Do you honestly expect them to sign 10+ players for under $5 million and not see any observable drop off in skill level?

Oh that’s right, they’ll just call up all those skilled youngsters. Uh Oh… contracts. Kyle Beach = $1.2 million a year, Akim Aliu = $845,833 a year, Jake Dowell = $525,000 a year. There goes $2.5 of your $5 million on 3 freaking “youngsters”, and you still need about 9 more guys for less than $2.5 million.

Let’s just ignore the fact that they will also have to let John Madden, Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Jordan Hendry, and Niklas Hjalmarsson walk to make these numbers make sense. Oh and they still have no back up goalie under this plan for Huet. Niemi is making $826, 875 a year, and to qualify him they have to offer him a raise.

There’s absolutely no way in hell they can keep the majority of their “core” together if they plan on icing a team that’s as competitive as you’re thinking.

just a logical extension of what the existing teams are doing. You offer him the Billion dollar contract over 1000 years, front loaded to pay him a whole lot of cash up front (so he takes home his 10 mil a year), and at some point he retires, and his cap hit goes with it… Until the NHL close the fricken loophole by forcing retired players contracts to stay on the cap.

for me, it depends on the term of the contract, and where we see Bozak, Kadri, Grabovski fitting in. Are we giving Bozak his shot at the NHL next year? Then Stajan can’t fit either way. If not, we want Stajan in the line up, $4 mill for 2 years would work, but anything longer wouldn’t make much sense.

Consensus seems to be he’s a competent second line center, but Kessel is a first liner if ever we had one. Once Kessel gets a REAL playmaking center (like all the elite wingers we found for Sundin, ahem), there becomes the question of how many points Stajan is racking up centering lesser wingmen. I don’t know how many it will be, but I’m guessing not a point per game.

Ponikarovsky is 29, while Stajan is still only 25. When Poni was done his season at the age of 25, he had played 197 NHL games, and he had produced 33 goals, 42 assists and was +34 playing alongside Sundin and Antropov.

Stajan has 421 games of NHL experience so far and he turns 26 in 6 days. So far he has produced 82 goals and 125 assists, and he’s a combined +2 after playing for years alongside a variety of checking forwards, and the likes of Darcy Tucker and Jason Blake. He’s finally gotten a legit shot over the past two years as a top line Centre, and he’s improving and growing into the role.

He’s in the top 30 in the NHL in number of face offs taken and won. He’s playing as a point per game player. He appears to be playing a solid defensive game. I really don’t have complaints with his play over the past month.

He might be inferior all around to Ponikarovsky right now, but he’s also 4 years younger, so I think he’s got room to continue to improve.

if Backstrom only get $4.5 mill, I’ll be stunned.
Kid’s the real deal, only he’s in Ovechkin’s shadow.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both…

with the Elite/plug system, you lose one of your elites for 4 weeks and up, you are seriously hurting the team.

With the Great/good system, you lose a guy, you can somewhat compensate because you have guys who don’t need to step up too much to keep pace.