Anyone else hear Dumont's comments on Channel 2 news tonight?

[BetweenThePipes00]

This is not my complaint. My complaint is that even in a salary cap league we are not financially equal. I do not expect Golsiano to use his personal cash to fund the team, I do expect the NHL to have a revenue system that puts all teams on equal footing. If 1/3 of the teams can't afford to spend to the salary cap, then the only purpose of the cap was to limit what the big markets can spend. In other words the salary cap in place is only a band-aid, it didn't fix much with the NHL financially IMO.

I can go on and on, but I don't like the financial position the Sabres are forced to play in. Maybe Darcy is the ultimate super-genius who will do nothing but pick FA gold, but odds are the continual swapping of players on the Sabres roster will probably keep us as the bridesmaids.

 

This is an entirely different discussion. No matter the system, teams which generate less revenue because of market size are always going to be at a disadvantage. All Iam saying is that given the situation, the Sabres are doing a decent job of managing it right now. We can complain all day that it is not really a level playing field but that ship sailed a long time ago and the current deal is much better than the last one.

 

My other complaint is that we are purposesly low balling our RFA's instead of being fair and signing them to solid 3 and 4 year deal. By fair I mean what the market would be willing to pay .If players are being forced to eat 1-2 year deals there not going to feel that great about staying with the Sabres long-term when they hit UFA status. In other words I forsee more and more players willingly moving to other teams just because the Sabres aggeesively kept their RFA's to short term club favored affordable deals. If the Sabres don't start spreading some love to their RFA's there will be a negative backlash, and other players will mumble between themselves. It may be the competitve way to run the business finacially, but I can't see how it's going to keep morale up on the team knowing that every year a handful of teammates are going to leave for greener more secure pastures.

 

First of all, if "the market would be willing to pay" Jay McKee $4 million a year, and you are Danny Briere or Max Afinogenov or Ryan Miller, what constitues a "solid 3 and 4 year deal"? $6 million a year? Obviously they can't afford to pay a bunch of guys that much. Besides, you are assuming it is the Sabres low-balling people when it is very possible and even probable that the best of the Sabres RFAs do not want long-term deals because they can make more on the open market. These guys have agents who could care less about the fans or winning Cups, they want to get the most money for their clients and the way to do that is get them out on the open market.

 

Let me put it this way ... McKee made around $1.6 million this past season ... last summer, if the Sabres had offered him $2.5 million a year, would you have called that low-balling him? No way. But if he had signed that deal, which he probably would have, he would have cost himself $1.5 million a year or $6 million over the life of the deal. Other players see that.

 

I know that in some cases you are correct, the Sabres can't offer big money long term deals to everyone and some guys are going to take it personally. That's the way it goes. The days of keeping a team together forever are gone. You can say the swapping of players will only hurt the Sabres, but Lydman and Numminen worked out OK last season. It's not the end of the world.

[inkman]

In other words the salary cap in place is only a band-aid.

 

 

I get the feeling it's going to take teams a while to figure out how to navigate their franchises through this salary cap era. Teams will most likely be able to spend top dollar for one or two franchise type players and fill out their roster with inexpensive youngsters.