It's IMPOSSIBLE to build through UFA. You can only add the right piece or two, if you're lucky. To build a team it needs to be done through trading and/or drafting well.
My goal with free agency is to simply get to the floor.
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It's IMPOSSIBLE to build through UFA. You can only add the right piece or two, if you're lucky. To build a team it needs to be done through trading and/or drafting well.
My goal with free agency is to simply get to the floor.
Exactly...you build through the draft, and use free agency to plug the final hole or two, either to move a team from playoff team to contender or, in my case, from 7-10 seed to 5-8.
With the age of UFA's coming down i think it will be easy for teams to add 1/5 their starting team via ufa at reasonable price's.... With the Rfa calculator making high paid young stars like nash-ovechkin-crosby-green all have huge contracts. These will be the kinda guys that are on the top end teams in the BRHL2 as they are the top top players..
With the big time brhl2 teams Chi-Buf-SJ-Phi all close or over the cap I think it will allow the weaker teams to be the only ones really participating in UFA and thus just adding solid pieces to their teams, and with the ufa's age's being younger the players will be able to help them for many seasons.
With a solid 5-7 g.m's in rebuild mode NYI-OTT-BOS-NJ-PITTS-MTL-LA these guys will likely sign one or two big name guys to huge deals strictly to hit the salary floor.
With that i think teams like Anahiem, Dallas, Florida, Vancouver, Washington, have solid enough teams that if they can land 3-5 starters be it 1st-2nd-3rd-4th line or whatever that with the teams they have and the cap space they also have that in a short time these could be the teams that control the brhl2... With the top teams having to battle to stay under a shrinking NHL cap, the teams that built through youth and have great cap space will be bigtime players in the future years..
This UFA season i expect to see solid price's on the majority of the large amount of UFA's yet their will be the crazy deals by a few teams just to get to the salary floor in their full rebuilds.
-- Edited by HOTLANTA on Sunday 5th of July 2009 10:53:55 PM
In all seriousness though, Kirk actually is correct (cue the celebration). I think with the way the elague is shaped right now, the midlevel teams shoudl be able to add to their teams reasonably priced UFAs in a few key spots and get better. Teams that throw multple big money contracts around may see a shortterm payoff, but will just handcuff themself in the future. Teams like NYI, Pittsburgh etc, that are a ways away from competiting should be trolling for mid-low level guys that they can get for an affordable price, and then peddle in mid season for picks etc.
This is definetely shaping up to be an interesting UFA period, with a whole variety of factros coming into play.
Teams that throw multple big money contracts around may see a shortterm payoff, but will just handcuff themself in the future.
I disagree with this statement...since there is no advantage to offering long-term deals in this league, you can get the short-term benefit without handcuffing yourself in the future.
I think with the way the elague is shaped right now, the midlevel teams shoudl be able to add to their teams reasonably priced UFAs in a few key spots and get better.
But in UFA, it never happens. Or is such a rarity, it is like spotting Nessie.
People can add the players, but the cost is usually unreal.....as we see in this latest installment.
