On Montreal trading Halak
by Hawerchuk on Jun 17, 2010 7:03 PM EDT
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PrintI said most of what I wanted to say when I wrote about Halak and Price a month and a half ago. The difference in value between the two goalies is very small, while perception of their abilities will never be further apart. With Halak's contract up, it was time to sell - I imagine he'll want quite the long-term deal, and it'll be hard for St. Louis (or anyone else) to wring a lot of surplus value out of him. Over the next three years, Halak will probably be underpaid by at most $10M, but beyond that he'll be worth at most what he gets paid. At worst, if he's injured or ineffective, he's a multi-year sinkhole.
Montreal's return on the deal might not seem that impressive, but a #13 pick like Lars Eller is worth about $3M (of future value) the day he's drafted. By the time it's apparent he can play in the NHL, he's worth $5M, with some upside. Overall, this is an asymmetric deal:
| $M | Upside | Downside |
| St. Louis | 10 | -43 |
| Montreal | 10 | -10 |
That's a bit simplistic, but it's essentially what's going on here. In the worst case for St. Louis, they sign Halak to a big contract and he's ineffective and needs to be stashed in the minors, and Eller turns into an OK player. In the worst-case for Montreal, they lose out on Halak's $10M in surplus value over the next three years and Eller never plays in the NHL. If you're not convinced Halak's as good as the contract his agent is demanding, you make this deal. Montreal has simply limited its downside exposure to his failure.
On another note: Denmark will soon be an international hockey power!
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Jibblescribbits: C'mon over and waste some time
by Jibblescribbits on Jun 17, 2010 9:17 PM EDT up reply actions
How much was Halak going to get anyway?
Using the AHL-NHL equivalencies, and hearing he had a mononucleosis sometimes in the season (not sure about that tough), I like this Eller fella more and more. Two more years on his entry-level deal, too…
Eller’s excellent at even strength – when I ran the numbers in February, he was one of the best ES scorers in the AHL. The numbers, and I would imagine the underlying numbers if we had them in the A love him.
Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.
Isn’t this a perfect case to take to arbitration? I can’t believe he’d find a lot of comps north of $2.5MM who he could use. Friedman suggests Lehtonen, which doesn’t really make sense to me.
I think arbitration is going to be a much more common option now. If somebody has a big year and you think it’s a fluke, one-year deals make much more sense. What happens the season following an RFA arb hearing? Arb-eligible again?
Halak can be awarded a 2 year arbitration deal. As long as you don’t eat up any UFA years, that’s an option as well.
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As for Denmark, I dunno how facetious you’re being, but any country that comes up with Frans Nielsen is fine by me.
by Passive Voice on Jun 18, 2010 2:14 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Finished 8th this past year at the Worlds (at the expense of USA and Slovakia, so 10th argument makes sense), ranked 13th in the 4 year rankings (missing the Olympics hurt, but they didn’t have their NHL/AHLers for that, Norway had Thoresen since he was in the KHL).
Should be an Olympic representative in 2014 for sure, though. Similar company to Belarus and Germany. Solid bet to be better than those two within a couple of years (Germany has enough good players, but are an unpredictable tournament team).
Regin and Nielsen were both great CORSI guys this past year, and supposedly Eller was at the AHL level. Haven’t checked Hansen’s numbers. And they have Philip Larsen going to Dallas next year (or to the AHL) as their first blueliner to make it.
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For Twitter Updates on Puck Worlds, follow @puckworlds. For updates plus additional witty banter from yours truly, follow @saskhab.
As a Blues fan...
I have to admit I’m pretty wary about this deal. I don’t feel its worth trading assets for a goaltender when we could simply sign Chris Mason for another two years at a similar cap hit and still get good production.
I suppose it’s likely Halak is a little bit better than Mason, but at the cost of giving up the assets we did when Eller can slot into the lineup as soon as next season that difference doesn’t seem like much.
Of course there is also the possibility that Halak is actually a complete monster and continues to improve and plays as one of the top goalies in the league. The Blues have struggled to find a goaltender to take care of them for the long term ever since the end of the Cujo era, so having a young solid guy we can lock up long term is very appealing to most fans. I really hope that Halak is that guy because I don’t want to see all the patience we’ve had waiting for our kids to develop wasted because of a sunk cost at the most important position.
Gauthier's comments and question about salary cap growth
TSN has a link up with a recording of an interview with Pierre Gauthier on the reasons for the trade. It sounds like their mgt team made the same assessments of player value as was made here (he even mentions Carey Price having played 150 NHL games plus a number of playoff games, plus rookie of the year at the AHL). The long and the short of it was “Older players are too expensive. You can’t win stanley cups without young players who outplay their cap hit — see Chicago.” Unsurprisingly, he also reports that every GM knows exactly what the cap situation is on every other team, so you don’t even need to tell teams that you are willing to trade a player.
The question that comes to my mind, also thinking of Tyler Dellow’s excellent post “Fortune Favours the Bold,” is whether a general economic rebound, which presumably will lead to faster increases in revenues and thus in the salary cap, changes this thinking at all. That is, if there is a (low escrow) rise in the rate of increase of the salary cap, will some of the long term contracts (like Richards, OV, Luongo, maybe Hossa) suddenly become (even) more worthwhile? Perhaps such contracts would even start to be as worthwhile as an entry-level player who can outscore at 5v5, playing reasonably hard minutes.
So, in other words, thinking in Dellow’s terms of “betting” on the future, is Gauthier implicitly betting that there will be even growth in the salary cap over the next 5-7 years such that it isn’t worth signing a mid-20s goalie to a long term deal? (I realize that Price might still be a better option in most scenarios of economic growth.)
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