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Trending Subjects is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. In the event you’re solely going to comment to say how silly Twitter is, why not just go have a superb cry for the sluggish, sad dying of your pricey web as a substitute?
One thing that you just hear so much relating to guys signing contracts is how they have or have not earned it. Corey Crawford, for example, this week “earned” his new lengthy and expensive extension with the Chicago Blackhawks.
It’s straightforward to see why that is an argument folks would make. He posted a 1.ninety four objectives-in opposition to common and926 save percentage within the regular season (though he was weirdly not nominated for the Vezina, and by weirdly I imply not-weirdly), then improved on both those numbers with a 1.eighty four and932 line en route to his club’s second Stanley Cup in four years. With it got here not only all of the laudatory back-patting due a player who backstops such a straightforward run to the grandest trophy in sports, but also an invitation to Canada’s Olympic orientation camp and loads of talk about how he looks like a really strong chance to make the workforce given how he actually picked it up this previous season.
These are stunning numbers to be sure, high and low precisely the place they should be and a possible indicator that the Blackhawks have one of the elitest-of-the-elite franchise goaltenders on their palms.
Certainly they are paying him as such. The contract doesn’t kick in until the beginning of the 2014-15 season and thus by that point he might move up or down the ranks a bit of, however as of this second he’s in line to be the fifth-highest paid netminder within the league behind solely Tuukka Rask, Pekka Rinne, Carey Worth and Cam Ward.
Meanwhile, Nazem Kadri finished tied for 21st in NHL scoring this past season, netting 44 factors as a 22-12 months-previous ahead who played in every of the Leafs’ 48 games. He was the only particular person to complete in the high 32 in scoring while taking part in fewer than 18 minutes an evening, having gotten simply sixteen:03 TOI on average. He has nonetheless gone unsigned up to now, partly due to the Maple Leafs’ cap crunch but primarily because of Dave Nonis’s insistence that he accept a group-friendly bridge deal, which in flip translates to the idea that he has in a roundabout way not earned the money that will usually be due a player who can score917 points per sport in a approach that, say, David Clarkson just for an instance clearly has.
You’ll recall that Clarkson was more or less the Leafs’ white whale since more or less day out of thoughts: A Toronto-born-and-bred high-flight NHL player, who for therefore long had shunned his hometown in favor of enjoying in a market where they care exponentially much less about hockey; and who could raise the Leafs from their long malaise if only he may very well be attracted with absolutely the right number of dollars and years calculated by solely the shrewdest normal manager. In fact the numbers — what now we have to go on for Clarkson over the breadth of his 426-recreation profession — dictate that he has earned neither the seven years for which the Leafs agreed to pay him nor the almost $37 million worth point at which the Leafs agreed to do so. He has, to date, a hundred and seventy profession factors and just 97 objectives (an average of just 18.7 over an 82-recreation season), all of which is buoyed closely by his 30-16-forty six effort in 2011-12, the only time he is ever cracked forty factors or even come close.
There’s a purpose this is fascinating and it isn’t because of how enjoyable it’s to laugh at Dave Nonis’s incompetence, although obviously most would admit freely how very enjoyable that is certainly. No, what’s interesting is the best way through which Clarkson and Crawford appear to have earned their contracts in the eyes of the vast majority of the hockey-observing public and definitely the blokes who’ve the authority to agree to such deals in the first place. Now we have mountains of evidence that these are league-common NHL gamers from a mere production standpoint.
That Crawford was able to put collectively 30 very good games within the common season and 23 more that had been even higher in the playoffs shouldn’t be an inherent cause to offer him either six years or $36 million, especially given the fact that Ray Emery put up statistics that were so similar (1.ninety four/.922) as to be eerie. One hates to throw around the time period “system goalie” because of the truth that, yeah, at the finish of the day you continue to gotta make the saves, and notably because Crawford had shown himself to be so adept at not doing so just a season earlier, however he and Emery having put up close to-similar numbers needs to be a tipoff that maybe there was one thing a little bigger than Crawford one way or the other changing into world-beating in the summertime and autumn main as much as this latest lockout-shortened season.
The obvious problem with Crawford allegedly earning that contract is the way in which through which he carried out in his quite a few NHL appearances prior to this one. He has played in just two full NHL seasons, and been anywhere even close to league-common in simply one in every of them; in 2011-12 — which you’ll also recognize as the newest full season the league has performed — he was 2.seventy two/.903. Goaltenders as a normal rule do not go around enhancing on their numbers that considerably for notably lengthy intervals of time after they flip 28 and that is especially true of those goaltenders who concurrently had been able to be categorized as “really not rather more than common” in his previous 122 appearances as nicely.
He entered last season with a career910 save proportion (proper according to these of Marc-Andre Fleury, Cam Ward, Chris Mason, Martin Biron, Devan Dubnyk among goaltenders with greater than 100 video games played between the lockouts), so why begin paying him as though he’s been putting up Henrik Lundqvist numbers this entire time?
You’ll also recall that the Blackhawks, having won the Cup and going through a big cap crunch last time around, jettisoned Antti Niemi to San Jose on the basis that their goaltending was reasonably priced and thus replaceable but have now decided Crawford is the rock upon which they are going to construct their group till such time as he turns 35 years previous. For some purpose.
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You should marvel in some unspecified time in the future what the idea, in GMs’ considering, is for a player having earned massive cash in this league is. It appears, at least from right here, as if the correct answer is tenure. Crawford’s deal came when he was 28. As did Clarkson’s. Niemi, presently of his winning the Stanley Cup and having been plucked from relative obscurity (simply three career video games played before usurping the starter’s role in Chicago) was just 26, and deemed disposable by seeming-genius GM Stan Bowman. Likewise Kadri has under no circumstances earned anything greater than, say, $3 million per season for the subsequent two although he almost met Clarkson’s career excessive in a forty eight-sport campaign regardless of getting fewer minutes per game and for the season on the power play than Mike Kostka, which by the best way is probably one of the best stat of the entire season league-broad. That is similtaneously Clarkson is due fabulous amounts of cash as a result of in his earlier 378 appearances between the lockouts he put up 0.39 factors per game, famously the identical amount as compiled by high-paid two-means forwards like Bobby Butler, David Moss and TJ Galiardi.
If the Leafs aren’t convinced that Kadri’s numbers are for real then why are they satisfied that Clarkson’s are? Their insistence on holding the previous at arm’s size as a result of he only produced in his one season within the NHL while embracing the other for only producing — a relative time period for a forty six-level campaign, you understand — in a single season out of six is frankly baffling. Ditto Niemi and Crawford.
The hockey world has gifted us with mountains of evidence as to why Crawford and Clarkson will most likely not stay up to their contracts, both in the short- and long term. It had accomplished no such factor with Niemi at the time and has not executed so with Kadri to this point. The plain level that Niemi is now a cut price (albeit for a distinct group than Chicago) is one which’s properly-taken, however the pondering that guys can solely receives a commission once they’re older, no matter what their manufacturing levels have looked like, creates a bizarre market inefficiency that teams are apparently unwilling to exploit.
Would you fairly have Niemi for one more two years with a cap hit of $3.eight million or Crawford for six at $6 million per? It is really not a tough question. They’ve each gained Cups with the Blackhawks, but just one has been better than league average in each of the last three seasons.
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Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. Here is his Twitter and here is his e-mail.
Contract extensions, Corey Crawford and the idea of ‘earning it’
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