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They say patience is a virtue and nowhere is that more evident than in the upcoming NHL free-agent season, where the handful of players that will get to July 1 without signing new contracts, stand to make small fortunes, on the grounds of limited supply and overwhelming demand.
The salary cap bump — to $56.7 million — and the pressure on half-a-dozen NHL teams to make the playoffs next season without fail, means they are open for business and will do whatever they can to land the Marian Hossas and Brian Campbells, who are out there, ready to listen to offers.
It is another virtue — player loyalty — that created this situation in the first place. So many of the players who were in a position to go to unrestricted free agency this summer opted to stay with their respective NHL teams.
The poster boys for that were the Calgary Flames, who got the ball rolling last July already when they coaxed their team captain and most valuable player, Jarome Iginla to sign a five-year, $35 million extension, even before he had a chance to see how the Mike Keenan era might unfold. As an unrestricted free agent, Iginla might have set a record in the post-lockout NHL, where an individual player can now earn $11.34 million per season, or a maximum of one-fifth of the cap.
With all of his assets — charisma, leadership, toughness, production - Iginla would have broken the bank this summer, if he had been of a mind to test the free-agent waters. Instead, he signed a deal that amounted to a significant home-town discount for the Flames; Iginla didn't even ask for a raise, largely so the organization could keep other key elements of the team in the place and theoretically anyway, challenge for a championship.
By November, goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff joined Iginla on the free-agent sidelines, signing a six-year extension that will keep him in Calgary for the rest of his prime years as well. On Friday, four more players who could have been free within 72 hours, officially stayed put as well — Daymond Langkow, Craig Conroy, Eric Nystrom and goaltender Curtis McElhinney, who will likely back up Kiprusoff after Curtis Joseph had that job down the stretch. Langkow's signing to a four-year deal reportedly worth about $20 million took a 65-point centre off the market, one who would have been snapped up by any number of teams, including the Columbus Blue Jackets, had he made it to free agency.
It wasn't just Calgary, however, that succeeded in getting its own key free agents under contract in the past 12 months. If Joe Thornton, the league's MVP in 2006, hadn't signed a three-year extension with the San Jose Sharks last summer, he too could have been an unrestricted free agent next week, same as the Ottawa Senators did the same with Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley. It went that way throughout the league last year - and the signs are the trend will continue, what with Vincent Lecavalier closing in on a nine-year, $77 million extension that will keep him in Tampa for life and Henrik Zetterberg expected to sign again with the Detroit Red Wings in early July, a development that will keep the reigning Conn Smythe Trophy winner from headlining the free-agent class of 2009.
The idea that granting unrestricted free agency to players at the age of 25, a key concession in the last CBA, would result in a wholesale shuffle of players, all willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder, didn't materialize. The combination of security; a comfort level in their current surroundings; plus the understanding that the grass isn't always greener elsewhere (except in the pure dollar sense) convinced many of the NHL's top players to pass up free agency.
Of the more than 100 players who will test the market beginning Tuesday, the vast majority has some issue or other that might limit their appeal, if the free-agent crop were deeper. Of the ones that don't have a discernible flaw, only a handful qualify at the highest-end of the spectrum — Hossa up front, Campbell on the blue line - and thus will command eye-popping contracts, big numbers and long terms. Even the second-tier of players (Brian Rolston, Pavol Demitra, Kristian Huselius, Ryan Malone, Sean Avery up front, Wade Redden and Brooks Orpik on defence, Cristobal Huet and Jose Theodore in goal) should command big dollars, far in excess of what they would be worth in a broader market.
