Brian Rafalski, who retired this week following an 11-year career as an upper- echelon defenseman with the Devils and Red Wings, once took considerably less money to stay in New Jersey than he would have received on the open market after a qualifying-offer snafu would have set him free.
It was the same scenario for John Madden, the outstanding checking center who is pondering retirement himself after an 11-season career that also began with the Cup champion 1999-2000 Devils. Back then, those decisions served to demonstrate the strength of the New Jersey program and organization that produced three championship teams and another finalist in a nine-season span from 1995-2003.
Now, nearly a decade after Rafalski and Madden accommodated the Devils’ needs, a pair of young Islanders have made accommodations for ownership in securing long-term contracts that will allow Charles Wang and general manager Garth Snow to keep their team’s emerging nucleus intact at least until either the team moves into a new Coliseum or moves to a new location five years hence.
Michael Grabner, a 23-year-old Calder nominee off a 32-goal, plus-13 rookie season, signed a five-year, $15 million back-loaded contract under which he will be paid $1 million this season, with annual $1 million increases.
Kyle Okposo, a potential future captain at age 23, also accepted a contract under which he will be paid $1 million this season, with his salary escalating to $4.5 million in the final season of the five-year, $14 million deal that will cost the winger a year of free agency according to the current CBA.
Both players were willing to structure their respective contracts to help out Wang, whose operation has (and will have) cash-flow problems while playing out of their antiquated home arena. That can only be interpreted as affirmation of the program on the Island, of belief in Wang, Snow and the group the front office has assembled.
This sends a message that teams hoping to poach the Islanders’ brightest young assets had best look elsewhere, though it will be mighty interesting indeed to see the path John Tavares chooses when he becomes eligible for Group II free agency (and an offer sheet) after next season.
This, of course, will barely matter if the initiative to build a new Coliseum is defeated at the ballot box. But until further notice, the decisions by Grabner and Okposo to take less to remain on the Island stand as declarations of belief in the program, the community and in the franchise.
Who knew?
The NHL didn’t expand to Atlanta (or move into Dallas, Phoenix or the state of Florida) because Gary Bettman fancied himself a Hockey Appleseed.
Rather, the league asserted its claim to non-traditional hockey markets in order to establish a “national footprint” for the purpose of attracting a lucrative commercial television contract.
Remember that phrase?
Now that the deal with Comcast/NBC is done at the price of $2 billion over 10 years (just under $7 million per team per year), there’s no need for Atlanta, no need to pretend the footprints haven’t been washed away like impressions on the beach at low tide.
Stronger ownership and greater interest in Winnipeg therefore is far more meaningful to the league than weaker ownership and less interest in Georgia.
Sunrise, Fla., and the Panthers should be next to do the reverse snowbird.
Speaking of which: after watching Nathan Horton‘s breakout playoffs, who doesn’t wonder who Stephen Weiss might play for if freed from the shackles of Sunrise, where the sun always sets on the hockey team?
Slats, perhaps, if Brad Richards can’t be signed?
The opening two games of last year’s World Series began at 5 p.m. local time in San Francisco, so why would anyone be surprised or outraged that the start times for the Final in Vancouver will be 5 p.m.?
This isn’t a plot against Canucks fans or the city or the franchise. It’s television business.
So there are Chris Chelios, Brian Leetch, Mark Howe, Rod Langway and Derian Hatcher as the five best American defensemen in NHL history.
That’s a fact.
Question. Who completes the third pair: a) Rafalski; b) Phil Housley; c) Mathieu Schneider; d) Mike Ramsey?
Doug Weight‘s retirement leaves only two active players from the 1996 World Cup champion USA squad that stands as the only American team to ever win a best-on-best international tournament.
Only Mike Modano (who could be retiring) and Brian Rolston (who played only one preliminary round match) remain from the team that was at the forefront of this country’s Greatest Hockey Generation. But do you know which borderline Hall-of-Famer did not play on that team even though he was healthy and the tournament took place at the prime of his career?
Jeremy Roenick, who was enmeshed in a Group II negotiating stalemate with the Blackhawks (that eventually got him shipped to Winnipeg for Alexei Zhamnov) and refused to play for Team USA without the protection of a long-term contract, that’s who.