It’s a tad early to designate which teams were winners and losers in the annual free-agent derby that got underway Wednesday, but the two Alberta teams have reasons to smile.
There are still too many players left, including the now toxic Dany Heatley if he should somehow be able to extradite himself from a colossal mess of his own making.
Still, there are some people walking around with gigantic smiles on their faces and at the top of the list have to be a pair of Canadian team bosses: Pat Quinn and Darryl Sutter.
Quinn should be especially pleased. In less than half a day he went from being the head coach of an Edmonton Oilers team without a solid No. 1 goaltender to being the head coach of a team with Nikolai Khabibulin slated to start in net.
It took perhaps more money than Khabibulin was worth what with $15 million over four years, but that’s down from what Khabibulin made when Chicago overpaid for him just after he won his lone Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004.
Khabibulin is no automatic upgrade for the Oilers because, quite frankly, he doesn’t always come to play. In truth Chicago never got full value for the monster six-year contract it bestowed upon him until it was time for Khabibulin to play for another contract, but it doesn’t have to be that way in Edmonton. Khabibulin played consistently well for coach John Tortorella in Tampa, in part because the coach made a commitment to the player and in turn the player, eventually, made a commitment to his coach.
Khabibulin stopped the smoking, cut back on the endless cups of coffee day in and day out and made a commitment to being both in the best shape of his life and to being a part of a team that relied on him to win. The effort welcomed him in as a part of a dedicated group that supported each other and found success.
That was a huge factor for the Lightning in a memorable run that culminated in the Stanley Cup.
Will it go that way with Quinn and for the Oilers? We’ll have to give a qualified maybe, but we would argue that Quinn is a coach who knows how to reach players and is capable of reaching Khabibulin. Quinn will be demanding, but he’ll also be understanding of what makes his new goalie tick, and if he plays the combination properly, they will both be smiling all the way to the playoffs.
It’s hard to remember the last time we saw Darryl Sutter smile about anything. Even signing his brother Brent to coach the team, but in getting Jay Bouwmeester, the best available defenceman on the free-agent market, he has to be nearing a state of ecstasy.
Sure he gave up the rights to a player he likely wasn’t going to be able to re-sign in Jordan Leipold and a third-round draft pick just for the right to lavish money on a player who hasn’t accomplished much more than Oli Jokinen in their respective times in Florida, but Sutter likes to build from his defence out and even without Leipold, he has a unit that, if healthy and focused, can do an awful lot in support of goalie Miikka Kiprusoff.
There are still numerous problems up front for the Flames and losing Mike Cammalleri adds to them. That and the fact that the Flames will likely be burdened by salary cap problems again all next season, but you can’t win in this league without having a big and mobile defensive corps, and the Flames at least have that going for them.
Looking elsewhere in Canada, Mike Gillis, the Vancouver Canucks general manager, is likely to have a certain grin over the next few days. It won’t be the look that comes with knowing you’ve acquired that missing piece that can put a team over the top, but Gillis did manage to keep the Sedin twins and that means the Canucks likely won’t backslide next season.
Any GM would be somewhat chagrined when he ends up paying even more money just to keep what he has while knowing what he has wasn’t enough to get into true Stanley Cup contention, but the beauty of the NHL in its salary-capped era is knowing that nowadays teams that were better than you the season before can, with one bad move, or sometimes just by standing still, can slip far enough so that your team is able to climb past them.
Want proof, look to the disastrous moves the Buffalo Sabres made in a very short time, moves that gutted the offense of a team that had made it to the Eastern Conference just three seasons ago yet have missed the playoffs the last two seasons and may do so again. Buffalo let key players go because it chose not to pay them and also chose not to replace them. Conversely, the New York Rangers overpaid several players Buffalo and other teams let walk and they too handcuffed themselves to the point where other teams were able to move past them.
That’s the two-edged sword of free agency; misplay it and it can cut you in many ways.
Regarding the other Canadian teams I would argue that the Toronto Maple Leafs got tougher with the addition of Mike Komisarek and Colton Orr, but that’s about it. Attempts to make a splash at the draft fizzled along the same lines that they did at the trade deadline last season and the free agent game didn’t exactly go Toronto’s way either.
General Manager Brian Burke thought he was a player in the Sedin game, especially with his longtime links to the brothers when he brought them to Vancouver, but he quickly found they weren’t willing to even listen to his siren song.
Same went for Mattias Ohlund, another Vancouver acquaintance that ended up in Tampa Bay and his attempt to grab Mike Cammalleri was on par with his draft-day attempt to grab Phil Kessel from Boston for Tomas Kaberle.
It simply fell apart at crunch time.
Burke rebounded fairly well with his pickup of Komisarek and he certainly added more toughness with Garnet Exelby and the physically imposing Colin Stuart. But he also re-learned something he already knew: Not a lot of players will lineup to wear the Blue and White simply because they are invited. It’s been true in the past, it is still true today and the sooner the Leafs accept that and act accordingly, the sooner they will get back to truly competitive status.
You have to build a culture of winning to compete in the free-agent market, at least to compete with teams that have that culture and money to spend. Burke still has much work to do in that regard.
It was a little different in Montreal where there is a culture (though it is flagging a bit) of winning and there was plenty of money around to try and improve it. It’s difficult to claim that GM Bob Gainey did it well. When you look at the players coming in –Scott Gomez, Cammalleri, Jaroslav Spacek, Brian Gionta and Hal Gill—the Canadiens certainly did well in collecting "name" value. Yet when you look at the fact that they couldn’t keep Komisarek, still don’t have a true No. 1 center, got far less in value then they did in contract expense for the vastly overpaid Gomez and still have questions in goal, on defence and down the middle, and it’s hard to say Gainey has truly upgraded the team.
That could change if the long-rumoured Vinny Lecavalier deal should come to fruition, but that’s a big if. Oh and one other thing, do not underestimate the impact of the decision not to retain Saku Koivu. True, he never led the Canadiens to the Cup, but he was a beloved figure in Montreal even if he chose not to speak French and his impact both in the locker room and with the fan base will not soon be forgotten.
It would take someone of the status of a Lecavalier for the fans to even begin to forget a captain who, in his own way, carried the flame in the tradition of great Canadiens captains of the past.
As for Canada’s other team, the Ottawa Senators, well the story is still unfolding, but no matter what the resolution of the Heatley affair it won’t result in smiles. Not for Heatley, the Senators ownership and management or the franchise’s legion of fans.
Heatley is the new face of evil in Ottawa’s hockey circles and there is not a single word he can say or a single thing the Senators can or even should do to change that.
That’s a shame really, but all and all July 1 was a good day for hockey fans across the nation. Canadian teams competed in the marketplace like they seldom could in the past. They have money, they have the ability to attract players (some more than others, but at least they all have the ability to compete) and they all have a chance to win, a better chance really then many of their brother franchises in the United States.
Heatley has put a damper on some of that, but he couldn’t ruin it for all and given some of the things we’ve seen in the past regards free agency and Canada, that is reason enough for smiles all around.
