Florida's craziness and Dale Tallon's lack of imagination
by Hawerchuk on Jul 5, 2011 12:18 PM EDT
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PrintLet's just take stock again of what Dale Tallon did over the last few weeks:
| Cap Hit | Salary | Term | |
| Tomas Fleischmann | 4.5 | 4.5 | UFA 2015 |
| Scottie Upshall | 3.5 | 3.5 | UFA 2015 |
| Tomas Kopecky | 3 | 3 | UFA 2015 |
| Sean Bergenheim | 2.75 | 2.75 | UFA 2015 |
| Marcel Goc | 1.7 | 1.7 | UFA 2014 |
| Brian Campbell | 7.14 | 7.14 | UFA 2016 |
| Ed Jovanovski | 4.125 | 4.125 | UFA 2015 |
| 26.715 | 26.715 | 28 seasons | |
| Total | 112.3 |
That's a big long-term financial commitment to declining players; it's a substantial overpay for basically every player on the list; and it still leaves Florida five wins shy of a playoff spot. If you were going to acquire players willy-nilly to get to the salary floor, why wouldn't you adopt a different strategy? Why not do shorter deals for slightly bigger bucks to keep the balance sheet a little cleaner? Or...Gasp! Why not look around for a way to circumvent the salary cap rules and save yourself a little money at the same time? There are more than a handful of over-30 players out there with cap hits that exceed their salaries:
| Cap Hit | Salary | Term | |
| Jason Blake | 4 | 3 | UFA 2012 |
| Daniel Briere | 6.5 | 4.75 | UFA 2015 |
| Ryan Malone | 4.5 | 3.375 | UFA 2015 |
| Michal Rozsival | 5 | 3 | UFA 2012 |
| Mike Komisarek | 4.5 | 4.167 | UFA 2014 |
| Ron Hainsey | 4.5 | 4 | UFA 2013 |
| 29 | 22.292 | 15 seasons | |
| Total | 59 |
Am I dreaming, or wouldn't all of these players be available for somewhere between very little and nothing? Don't other NHL GMs owe Dale Tallon big-time for all of the stupid trades he's made in the past? Maybe I just dislike Jason Blake? I think Toronto and Philly would love to have the cap space; Tampa would love to get another over-30 guy with an injury history off the books; and Anaheim, Phoenix and Winnipeg would love to get rid of salary and use it for something more useful.
These contracts are bigger pigs than the ones Florida actually signed ($4.5M per win vs $4.1M per win), so the Panthers might have even been able to pull in a draft pick here or there and the team wouldn't be any worse. But the key is that Florida's new owners - whoever they may be - would have $53M less long-term debt under this scenario than they do today. That Dale Tallon did what he did shows a complete and utter lack of imagination.
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Ron Hainsey
Good choice for that list. The Thrashers would have loved to get rid of Ron Hainsey’s contract for quite a while now. I think we regretted it soon after we signed it. He’s really worth only about 3 million… he’s simply a solid 2nd pairing with no special teams abilities.
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by ThrashersRecaps on Jul 5, 2011 12:27 PM EDT reply actions
ANA actually kinda likes Blake’s deal, since they operate on an internal cap. I’d like to say PHI wouldn’t trade Briere, especially after losing so much scoring in Carter and Richards, but… they traded Carter and Richards.
Any of the other 4 guys I could see being traded, but Komisarek is hardly the worst deal the Leafs have on their books to pass off to Tallon. Everyone forgets about Jeff Finger!
What exactly were the circumstances of TOR attempting to trade cap space a couple years ago? That’s the only reason I can see FLA not doing this (aside from Dale Tallon being a dumbass).
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Rozsival’s deal is even better for Phoenix, that deal’s not going anywhere.
You can’t trade cap space, period.
I guess there aren’t enough 35+ deals in the NHL that someone like Florida could buy out and save money with. But yeah, Tallon’s scheming seems really stupid. Maybe he actually thinks that Brian Campbell is worth it.
Phx would take a pick or an elc for Rozsival. Remember that he was a contract for contract swap – Wolski
by Hawerchuk on Jul 5, 2011 12:49 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
huh? according to capgeek, phoenix is 8M below the salary floor. they still need to sign korpikoski and yandle which will eat up much of that room, but they can’t afford to be disposing of a guy who currently takes up 1/8th of their payroll at less than 1/13th of their salary.
PHX is more creative than you give them credit for, but they’d probably give you Rozsival and Morris for a 7th round pick.
with their future in question and probably a large reluctance among A and B grade free agents to sign there long-term, i’m not buying it. they are a smart organization, but i don’t know how they’d manage to add 7M in salary.
Why would they do that? Roszival’s a reasonably good defenceman and Phoenix needs these poor-team deals as much as Florida.
by Passive Voice on Jul 5, 2011 5:10 PM EDT up reply actions
Whoops. I forgot Rozsival is with PHX now and not NYR. NYR would’ve dealt that in a heartbeat, while trying to bring Richards on. But yeah, PHX probably wouldn’t make that trade – they’re in a similar boat as FLA. My bad.
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Komisarek’s deal is worse than Finger’s because it contains a NMC that prevents him from being sent to buried in the minors.
At any rate, the point of including Komisarek on this list was because, like the rest, he will start to be paid less than his cap hit.
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by Back In Black on Jul 5, 2011 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions
Any of the other 4 guys I could see being traded, but Komisarek is hardly the worst deal the Leafs have on their books to pass off to Tallon. Everyone forgets about Jeff Finger!
???
4.5 mil cap hit for 3 more years. Even if I give you that Fingers is worse right now (it’s not, that deal is up next year) which other contracts are worse than Komi’s?
Phaneuf’s is the only one you could argue… and Phanuef sucks way less than Komisarek does.
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by Kevin Sellathamby on Jul 6, 2011 8:14 AM EDT up reply actions
Long-term contracts
Long-term contracts just don’t make sense, unless:
1. It’s at a substantial discount
2. It’s an anchor player who attracts fans, and other talent
3. It’s a younger player whose value is sure to increase rapidly
4. The last few years are bogus and you want to piss of Brian Burke
5. You’re pretty sure your franchise is moving to Canada
6. You’re Glen Sather and have a reputation to uphold
None of those are the case in Florida.
Doesn’t the cap increasing by a bajillion dollars every year make long-term deals a little easier to handle, especially if you can get a reduced cap hit for a few more years?
At the end of the deal, when that extra cap money might be hurting you, it’ll end up being a smaller % of the cap anyway so a player’s decline won’t hurt as much.
Saying that acquiring contracts with lower salary than cap hits would require “imagination” is just false.
Anybody who has followed the long-term contract craze even a little has used the “Trade him to a team needing to reach the floor” excuse to say it’s not a problem.
“Guys, you can trade Chris Pronger when he’s 41 to a team who wants a $4.9 mil cap hit but only $525k in salary” has been repeated ad nauseam at BSH. And that isn’t an “imaginative” way of thinking.
I guess what I’m saying is: Dale Tallon is dumber than Philly fans.
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It does take a little imagination to understand that you’d be better taking really crappy contracts off the hands of other teams than going in to the free agent market and signing merely crappy deals.
I’m just shocked (shocked!) that Tallon didn’t do it even once.
Well, better in terms of on-ice product, sure, that’s not the easiest thing to grasp.
But I don’t think it’s that difficult of an idea to realize front-loaded contracts for players who are still producing is a better way to reach the floor than simply overpaying average players.
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by Geoff Detweiler on Jul 5, 2011 7:00 PM EDT up reply actions
I understand what you are saying, but... Which of those two lists makes the club better?
New Passion. New Players. New Panthers.
I think there is a chance that slogan was created before free agency and they wanted to go out make a splash. It is not a secret that the team was failing and there is a legitimate reason to believe they may not be competing with the NFL and / or the NBA next year.
The Panthers putting out a competitive product in a down year could be their last kick at the cat… so to speak.
I understand what you are saying, but… Which of those two lists makes the club better?
If you don’t know which one is better, and you’re worried about fielding a competitive team, wouldn’t it make sense to go with the one that saves the club money, and is indistinguishable from the expensive one?
I think you’re agreeing with the notion that Tallon messed up, but can’t tell.
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by Geoff Detweiler on Jul 5, 2011 7:02 PM EDT up reply actions
I don’t know that he messed up. Was it super elite? No, but it isn’t the worst I have seen. I really don’t get the Jovo deal, but ultimately he improved his team, he added semi young players (Jovo aside), that are more talented than what he had before and he is just scraping the cap floor. Could be worse.
by truck on Jul 5, 2011 9:58 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
We’re not arguing over it being the worst you’ve seen. But there’s Group B, which costs less, provides flexibility, and is just as good going against Group A, which costs more, is locked into longer terms, and isn’t any better. Group B wins
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by Geoff Detweiler on Jul 6, 2011 10:34 AM EDT up reply actions
Assuming...
1) these players were actually available.
2) they were available at a reasonable price.
No way of knowing that they were.
No way of knowing that these options weren’t investigated.
Is saving a few million dollars this year worth giving away an entire draft class?
I understand the idea of long term flexibility, but I suppose nitpicking based on hypotheticals isn’t my thing.
What evidence is there that the Panthers are “putting out a competitive product”? Bodog has them at 75-1 to win the cup, same as the Islanders and behind the Jets!
If management believes they added players that will make them either a fringe or serious playoff contender and will help them take advantage of the hole in the market, then they did their job. They are better now than they were and didn’t give away draft picks to get there. Why is that so bad?
by truck on Jul 5, 2011 9:53 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I think our consensus is that the more prudent course of action would have been trading for bad contracts from CGY, WSH, etc, but demanding a dowry as well, kind of like the Campbell deal. Many of those players are better than who Tallon signed. If he wouldn’t trade, then sign better players and give less term. He probably made the worst possible move—make his team marginally more competitive while it’s still rebuilding, and sign ing players to fill those depth spots you’d want your younger players to fill as they develop.
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by red army line on Jul 5, 2011 10:48 PM EDT up reply actions
also
Just because management believes the team is better, doesn’t make it so. Their job is to actually improve the team, not just look like it and believe that it’s so.
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Hey! As a Winnipeger, I hope they have done more harm than good to their on ice product, but I don’ think that is the case. They should be better now than they were before the signings and they are just scraping a cap floor that will continue to rise.
Who knows… Even if they attempted every one of those trades there would be no guarantees they would be accepted, especially moves like scooping Briere from a team that just got rid of everybody else. What is the value of the retained draft picks?
Signing better players for less term? I think that would be every GM’s dream.
Which better players were available and would have gone to Florida for less money and a shorter term? I can’t criticize a guy too much for not making trades that may or may not have been there.
Throw a boatload of money at Jan Hejda for 2 years, for example. Scott Hannan is still out there and played top pair on a playoff team not too long ago (admittedly, the 09-10 Avalanche). Jason Arnott could provide “experience” and “leadership” and “mentor younger players” (if you believe in that stuff). Maybe not so much Arnott, but Hejda and Hannan aren’t exactly old yet, I could see them taking a year “off” to make a lot of money.
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by red army line on Jul 6, 2011 10:33 PM EDT up reply actions
Another idea I was kicking around my head as that Tallon should have thrown even more money at these guys if it got them to shorten the term.
Would Upshall sign for one year if you gave him $5 million? You still reach the floor but have some flexibility to sign somebody next year or the year after when the Panthers are in a better spot to compete.
The craziest thing in all of Tallon’s insanity is that his goalie actually took a step backwards. How do you have that much cap room and manage not to sign Vokoun or somebody similar?
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Everytime I get sad about the Flames, remembering that Dale Tallon is GM of another team makes me feel just a little better.
He also could’ve nabbed Souray off of waivers for $4.5 million in salary with a $5.4 million cap hit.
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There’s no way he could have gotten all of the Group B guys, of course, but the point still stands that he probably could have gotten at least one of them. Plus Souray, of course.
And Fleischmann, Upshall and Jovo make zero sense at the deals they got. Just zero.
That said, unless they came with a dowry, and I don’t think many of them would, the Group B guys would cost assets + salary. The Group A guys only cost cash money. So there’s that.
Of course it’s a lot of cash and a lot of term for guys that won’t be impact players if/when the Cats are competitive. So, yeah, Tallon screwed the pooch.
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