The Buzz Between the Boards: Free Agency still changing within NHL?

NHL worthy goalies floating around with no homes. Decent defenseman that many teams could use not being signed and its halfway through August. What is going on with the NHL free agency market? Well so much money is being commanded by some big name guys that many teams now have two or three big contracts that limit what that teams can do as far as spending extra money. Are free agency and big contracts starting to cripple the NHL?

Think about the Kovalchuk situation, he wants a contract that no matter what will give him over $100 million over the life of the contract. Today an arbitrator upheld the NHL’s rejection of the 17-year contract Kovy tried to agree to with the NJ Devils. Just a little pricey huh? That’s more then a couple of the cheaper teams in the NHL will spend over the next two seasons. I understand that the talent level is getting up there, and the top players deserve to be paid. But when is it getting to be too much?

The NHL can only continue to grow so much before it will start to taper off and the cap will stop going up. But players still want more and more money. But with everyone wanting to get a higher paycheck, at some point it will get too excessive. We may be seeing some of it starting with this current off-season. Guys that are quality guys that could be great depth pick-ups or solid mid-level players taking longer to sign, or are taking less money, or are still without homes as we start to get closer to the new season. A goalie that can still play like Marty Turco just finally got a home and took a huge pay-cut just to even have a job. Guys like Eric Belanger, Lee Stempniak, Jay McKee, and Marc-Andre Bergeron are still out there as unrestricted free agents and could definitely be good pick-ups for many NHL teams. But many teams are still waiting on their restricted free agents and hearings to see if they can even afford to sign their RFAs. So being scared of which RFA they can afford to sign and can’t, some teams are not even pushing to sign some of their UFAs and even free agents on the market.One main area we have started to see it hit is with goaltending. Many teams are now going with the strategy that spending less on goaltending and spending more elsewhere can be effect. While that may be true, we have seen a couple of the top teams in the west in Chicago and San Jose go cheap with new goalies because they choose to focus their finances more on high paid players and paying younger players big contracts early in their careers. Also we have seen Philadelphia struggling with finances after spending a lot on many good players, but having tied up a lot of their money on about half their roster.

So time will tell what will happen, but more and more players getting huge contracts only limits the money that other players can get and the ability of teams to spend on other areas. And some teams are also operating under the cap as either their current ownerships don’t want to spend that much, or some teams are operating with less as they are currently in the process of being sold or possibly being put out for sale. Just in my opinion I am seeing more and more players getting more and more money even though many teams are still operating at the same level. Soon enough these huge contracts will start costing teams not just money, but the ability to sign other players and the ability to compete at times.

(Sorry for my tardiness readers, I was moving this last week and finally got my internet going today.) As always you can find great posts here at TooManyMen, catch me regularly talking Dallas Stars hockey at Blackoutdallas.com. Also you can follow TooManyMen on Twitter at Twitter.com/TwoManyMen, and my twitter at Twitter.com/BlackoutDallas.