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This week's edition of our NHL Free Agency Preview covers the biggest free agents from the Rangers and Islanders, including Ryan Smyth, Jason Blake and Brendan Shanahan.
I'm posting the abridged version for now, but later tonight I'll add commentary for Scott Hannan and Gary Roberts.
Next week, I'll comment on Rivet, Guerin, Sundin, Antropov, Peca, plus a few other players I may have skipped over. Click below to start reading this week's entry.
We're back with Part II of our NHL free agency preview. This week, we cover free agents out of Detroit, Minnesota, Montreal, Nashville and New Jersey. Some of the biggest names -- like Forsberg, Gomez and Souray -- are in this 10-pack, including lots of players who the Islanders and Rangers are targeting... enjoy!
Some might say I'm jumping the gun, considering the season isn't over and free agency doesn't begin until July 1, but it's never early to have a little speculative fun.
This past season was one of the most exciting in the past 20 years for New York hockey, so in the interest of keeping the excitement alive, I thought I'd take a look at some of this summer's top free agents and assess where they might be headed and why.
For some local flavor, I've noted whether or the Rangers or Islanders might be interested in each player. Since it takes some time to research these things, I've broken this blog into several parts for safe and easy digestion.
Also, bear in mind I don't have a whole lot of inside info on this stuff. What I know, I know from research and my very few contacts in the hockey world. So don't go too crazy -- have some fun with it.
Last thing before we get started: I have to tip my cap to a great NHL salary cap web site, www.nhlnumbers.com, which was the basis of a lot of my research and conclusions.
Here are the first 10 free agent reviews, starting alphabetically by current team:
J.S. Giguere, 30 (on May 16), G, Anaheim Ducks
2006-07 Stats: 36-10-8, 2.26 GAA, .918 save percentage
Who might be interested: Ducks, Wings, Bruins, Panthers, Lightning, Coyotes
Giguere's stock is rising again, as he's helping to lead his team on a serious Stanley Cup run. He's posted a 1.28 GAA and a ridiculous .952 save percentage in the playoffs so far. This means someone is going to have to pay a premium for his services, and Giguere will likely want at least a four-year contract at around $5 or $5.5 million/year.
From a hockey standpoint, the Ducks are the favorites to sign him, because Giguere is the centerpiece of that team -- despite all-star defensemen Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer. But things get interesting from a financial standpoint.
Giguere will demand a raise from the $3.99 million he made last year, which could be a problem for the Ducks. The Ducks have only three defensemen -- Pronger, Niedermayer and Francois Beauchemin -- under contract for next season. Granted, they are the Ducks' top three defensemen, but players cost money, and as much as Randy Carlyle would love to play those three for 40-plus minutes per game, Anaheim will need to spend some to fill out the depth on the blueline. How much attention the blueline gets, and the Ducks' ability or inability to fill those final three spots with effective, but cheap players will dictate to a large extent how much money they can afford to keep Giguere.
The Giguere decision will also be influenced by what Anaheim has in store for fan-favorite Teemu Selanne (see below). If the Ducks make a big commitment to Selanne, they'll be hard-pressed to bring back Giguere. Anaheim might also feel they can find more value in backup goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, who filled in well for Giguere at times this season, or free agent Niklas Backstrom, who was superb for Minnesota after Manny Fernandez went down in 2006-07.
The door could be open for Detroit -- which could lose Dominik Hasek to free agency or retirement -- or Boston, which is desperate for quality goaltending, to step up and steal Giguere from the Ducks. Florida has cap room and needs a goaltender after the Roberto Luongo disaster. With an improvement in net, they would become a contender for an Eastern Conference playoff spot.
The Lightning were doomed by lousy goaltending all year long, but Marc Denis is under contract for three more seasons. If they can find a way to dump Denis, Tampa would become a major player for Giguere.
Phoenix needs a centerpiece and some life breathed into their team, and could woo Giguere with a big offer.
Islanders? Two words: Rick DiPietro
Rangers? Two more: Henrik Lundqvist
Prediction: Giguere won't be able to resist the big money from other teams and the Ducks won't be able to match it. He'll end up in Detroit, which has big expectations and lots of expiring contracts this summer.
By Mark La Monica
Intentionally retaliating by throwing at a baseball player during a game never made much sense to me.
Yeah, yeah, It's part of the infamous "unwritten rules" of baseball. There's a reason they're unwritten: No one wants to be credited with being the idiot who wrote down these dumb things.
On rare occasions, though, hitting a player would appear to be a smart move in terms of clubhouse loyalty. Example: Seattle's Jarrod Washburn slinging a fastball at the Yankees' Josh Phelps on Sunday afternoon seemed to be acceptable for the Mariners. Phelps threw a completely unnecessary shoulder into Seattle catcher Kenji Johjima on a play at the plate.
Johjima was on the first-base side of the plate trying to catch a throw, leaving the entire plate unblocked. Phelps avoided the plate and hammered into Johjima to make sure he wouldn't catch the ball and tag him out. It would have been a clean baseball play . . . had Johjima actually been in Phelps' way.
So, Washburn drilled Phelps in his next at-bat. Makes sense. Somewhere.
But then Scott Proctor, with two outs in the seventh, zipped a 95-mph fastball behind Yuniesky Betancourt. Proctor got tossed within seconds.
Some baseball people will claim that Proctor had to defend his teammates, had to let other teams know that they might get hit, had to assert his alpha-male status on the mound and gain the respect of his fellow players.
I say, "Great job, Proctor! Way to force Torre to use ANOTHER guy in the bullpen! Real smart, team player!"
Proctor needs to be intelligent. There's no reason to throw that pitch. Just get the out, shut your mouth and end the inning. Maybe then the bullpen won't completely implode every other game and perhaps the Yankees will dig their way out of AL East sub-mediocrity.
Why cause a stir and force the benches and bullpens to empty? If you're going to do that, at least throw a punch. Make it worth everyone's while. Don't just stand there and posture at the guy.
Instead, Proctor got tossed from the game, forced the manager (Don Mattingly replaced the ejected Torre) to go to another arm out of the bullpen and is now subject to a potential fine or suspension.
Not smart.
Here's another thing that's not smart: the bullpens jogging into the foray from left field. Why? If they're going to bother coming onto the field to defend their teammates, they could at least run.
Better yet, why don't the opposing bullpens just fight in the outfield? That would seem to make more sense if they were serious about defending their teammates. By the time they get to the infield, the umpires, coaches and players usually have everything under control. If the bullpens really wanted to mix it up, they'd go at it in the outfield.
If a black comic makes a racist, sexist joke about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team in the forest of late-night TV, does it make a sound in the mass-media landscape? Apparently not.
Comedian D.L. Hughley appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” Wednesday night and was prompted by the host to talk about the Don Imus-Rutgers women’s basketball controversy. While saying the issue was about free speech, that Imus shouldn’t have apologized and that people “can laugh at anything you want to,” Hughley went right to the women’s appearance.
“They weren’t ho’s, but there were some nappy-headed women on that team,” Hughley said as the studio audience gasped – and laughed. “Shut up. I’m gonna say it. I don’t give a damn if y’all like it or not, you know it's true. Them is some of the ugliest women I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
Leno appeared a bit uncomfortable, even saying “Thank you, good night everybody. Thank you,” as if he were ending the show at that point. Yet he laughed throughout.
Hughley continued: “If you can palm a basketball and braid your own hair, somebody is going to say something about you. The first time they had makeup on was the press conference.”
Um, excuse me, but any serious athlete is not on the court to look hot, she’s there to kick butt. She ties her hair back to keep it out of her face, and she doesn’t wear makeup because it will run as she speeds up and down the court and clog her pores like the big girls clog the lane. And she wears sweatbands because she, well, sweats. A lot. It’s a satisfying sweat, knowing you’re pushing yourself to the limits to win. And that’s what the game is about.
But to misogynists like Hughley, it’s all about looks.
To be fair, he attacked the looks of Imus and the Rev. Al Sharpton, too. It doesn’t make what he said about the women of Rutgers OK. And he doesn’t get a pass on the “nappy-headed” racism because he’s black, despite his claims that “the only cool thing about being black is you can say things other people can’t say.” If anything, it gives the words more hurtful credence, and feeds into the hip-hop hook of putting down black women.
So where’s Sharpton? Where’s the National Association of Black Journalists? After all, Hughley was appearing on and is employed by NBC, which was the first network to censure Imus when he said what he said. As I write this, no other news outlet has acknowledged Hughley’s comments beyond a Tulsa TV station web site mentioning his observations on Imus and Sharpton, not the Rutgers women.
OK, there’s a difference: Hughley is a comedian and Imus is considered a news commentator. Imus frequently would have the biggest newsmakers of the day on his show. Then again, so does Leno. In fact, Hughley followed presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday night’s show. So, perhaps, the onus is put on NBC, since Leno’s show is taped hours before it airs. Someone could have raised the scarlet red flag to Hughley’s racist, sexist joke and edited it out.
But that would have been ironic, considering the point Hughley was trying to make about free speech. In arguing that Imus had the right to say what he did, Hughley said people tend to stop laughing at something when it’s deemed politically incorrect. “You can laugh at anything you want to,” he said.
He said that firing Imus doesn’t address greater problems in the black community, such as black-on-black crime and illiteracy. He riffed on the satisfaction after Imus’ firing: “We finally got the one guy who was holding us back … Thank God stuff will get better now.”
But he could have made his point more powerfully had he not demeaned the women of Rutgers – again.
