Diehard1 wrote:To a certain point I agree - but how many teams will be able to spend to the cap? Toronto, Vancouver, the Rangers, Philly, maybe Boston - my point is there aren't nearly as many teams that will go over $70 million.
Lots of teams are able to do it - add Montreal, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, then there are Calgary and Los Angeles and Washington who all spent within $2m of the cap this season.. that's still omitting San Jose, St. Louis and Dallas both have new ownership, Nashville have opened up the vault over the last year or so, Tampa is a small market but have shown a willingness to spend money (their owner is spending tens of millions out of his own pocket to upgrade the arena this offseason)...
Add in the fact that most free agents want a winning team, a good organization that treats players right and a nice, liveable city and you don't have that many teams left.
I don't think any free agent wants to sign with a losing team but they certainly seem to be willing to chance it for an extra million per or an extra year or two on the contract.
Look at Christian Ehrhoff, for that matter look at what lesser teams were willing to offer guys like Tomas Fleischmann, Ed Jovanovski, Ville Leino, etc.
The Nucks don't have that many holes to fill. They need a top 4 dman, a top 6 forward and a 3rd line center. Those aren't huge money additions and there will be at least $10 million to spend to fill these.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they have to rebuild the team in free agency and won't be able to do it - but even those three relatively small holes are the kinds of holes every team is looking to fill at the trade deadline, in free agency - there are a handful of teams who are happy with their top six forwards and their third best center and their top four defensemen, and I don't know if there's one team happy with all three.
And there aren't really that many of these guys going around.
There are 19 defensemen who played 19 minutes or more and seven or eight of them are pretty much done or at the very least not worth the risk of a multi-year deal. Further complicating matters is the fact that the Canucks need a guy who can play the right side, so of those guys and then the guy you'd make room for no matter what (Suter) we're talking about maybe five or six guys?
Looking for a scoring winger is tough as well; there are eighteen wingers who averaged 15 minutes or more last year and two (Doan and Selanne) aren't going anywhere, six of them are ancient (Samuelsson, Sykora, Sullivan, Whitney, Smyth, Jagr), a few more after that have zero offensive ability (Moen and Winnik) and can't play a top six role and then there are a few flakes sprinkled in as well (Huselius, Semin, Kostitsyn, etc). So again we're talking about less than ten proven guys who are likely to last the season.
Center is even worse, there are twelve guys on the market that aren't pretty much guaranteed fourth liners, and of them there are seven guys who kill penalties and are not related to Steve Moore.
In my opinion there are about 30-35 guys who are worth more than, say, $2m a year for multiple years in free agency. It would be a major coup for the Canucks to get three of the best of them without drastically overpaying, and if 2010 is any indication (when Mike Gillis traded for Keith Ballard rather than hoping to sign two key players on July 1st) I don't think Gillis will leave things to chance.
My hope is that the team (correctly) believes it has the personnel to address one of these needs without making a move, addresses another in the inevitable goalie trade and addresses the final one through free agency.
So for example getting a winger back in a goalie trade, signing a guy like Jason Garrison and going into next year with a rehabilitated Manny, Lapierre and Schroeder competing for two spots.