OT- Stamkos Re-Signing with the Lightning
According to Bob McKenzie of TSN, Steven Stamkos will re-sign with the Tampa Bay Lightning. This comes as a bit of a surprise as the three favorites to sign him were Detroit, Buffalo, and Toronto. This comes as a bit of a blow to the Wings, who were favorites to sign the 26 year old all star.
(Sorry I cant embed tweets so can someone else embed McKenzie's?)
Off the board, look for the Wings to retool their roster by attempting to sign Andrew Ladd, Milan Lucic, or Frans Nielsen
I would be irate if that happened. Lucic is absolute scum.
Lucic is heading to Edmonton and the Hall trade cleared the space for him.
Which is great, he can go lose up there.
So much NHL news at the same time. This stinks I really wanted him in a Red Wings uniform.
Stamkos is the type of talent that you can build a team around. Him and Larkin would have been a strong 1-2 punch for years to come.
Also, it debunks my theory that if a super star player isn't extended before he becomes an expiring, usually he's gone.
Seriously. We need Stevie Y back. We're not there yet, but this could become a Harbaugh-like situation.
Yzerman has built a nice team, but it's easier to build a team when you bottom out (missed the playoffs his first two seasons and got swept in the 1st round in the the 3rd) and have Stamkos and Hedman as building blocks. The Wings are overdue for some lean years. When you make the playoffs for 25 straight years and never have a top 10 pick, eventually you will run out of luck with the Datsyuk/Zetterberg picks in the late rounds. It's really a miracle they never had to rebuild after the Yzerman/Lidstrom era. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the team tanked next season and we started a true youth movement at the new arena.
Did the RR and Hoke eras teach you nothing about taking excellence for granted.
I get what you're saying, but college football is different because you get nothing for losing. In the pros, you actually get rewarded for sucking. Of course... you have to make the right picks or you risk becoming the Edmonton Oilers.
they are now stuck in limbo. Good enough to scrape into the playoffs but no shot of competing for a Cup. And the days of them landing prize free agents is over so it is hard to see how they gain enough talent without a true rebuild, a process they shoudl have started 4 years ago.
Trades and not overvaluing your prospects to the point that the whole league finds out they suck before you can trade them. That's the way to move forward. Keep drafting talent in the first round. Find trade bait in rounds 2-3.
Edmonton traded Hall today, so all signs point to Lucic to Edmonton.
shit balls.
I'm a sad panda now.
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Rumor has it was because of Babcock in most recent years...
... I would suspect also hurting the Wings as a destination now is because they aren't contenders. We will see though. Tigers got Pudge and that started a good run.
Also, these contracts are ridiculous... every couple of years someone is going to have to pull off dumping a contract to someone who needs to make the cap floor -- and it isn't going to work every single time.
but what top tier free agents have hit the open market recently? The Red Wings have been in a very fortunate situation to have a very good team with good veteran players, so they're not exactly flush with cap space in order to give a max deal to a player.
The last guy I can think of that they missed out on was Zach Parise, and even he got more money in Minnesota. Could be wrong.
The Wings offered Parise 13/$90MM.
The Wild offered 13/$98MM.
What hurt the Wings in that one is he was a package deal with Suter.
It does appear though that the Wings aren't a destination anymore. When was the last big acquisition? Like a Luc Robatille or Brett Hull?
Instead, we're getting a shell of himself Brad Richards or hoping Jordan Tootoo works out.
Suter and Parise haven't won much in Minnesota. Suter would have been a nice replacement for Lidstrom, but I doubt he would have helped us win the Cup. The real Cup winning teams have a core like Kane/Toews, Crosby/Malkin and Wings had that when Pavel and Z were in their prime. After 2009, the Wings core kept getting older and guys like Tatar and Nyquist were basically complementary pieces and not players that can carry a team.
During the glory years(90s and 2000s), the Wings mostly won with their own players. Hull and Robatille were past their prime when they signed. Sure they helped the team win in 2002, but that was mostly the core they had (Yzerman, Lidstrom, Fedorov) plus Hasek(who they got by trading Kozlov). Also, when they started signing big names like Cujo and Hatcher, it didn't exactly work out.
affect the Wings, but Shea Weber was just traded straight up for PK Subban. The NHL is rolling today.
More money for Franzen.
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Detroit, Buffalo and Toronto are nowhere close to being as complete of teams as the Lightning are right now, and they managed to get within a game of the Finals for a second year in a row w/o their Vezina candidate goalie and their star captain.
Having Yzerman around helps too.
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That's really unlikely to be the case, honestly. That $8.5M cap will will make it really hard for them to sign all of their RFAs that are upcoming, let alone upcoming UFAs, which are major pieces of the puzzle in the Lightning organization's future. I understand why they did it (because he's the face of their franchise), but I really think this was a mistake by Yzerman (despite the posts here lauding his efforts on this). My guess is that Yzerman probably would have been ok with him leaving, but that ownership forced this issue. I'll bet money that we'll look back on this in a few years and universally agree that this was a mistake for Tampa Bay.
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Between this and his crappy Oikos commericials, I really don't care for the guy.
sign and trade?
He gone. Believe he has a no trade clause as well.
Hell NO! Rangers should have never traded for him or Yandle (lost a big time prospect in Duclair to get him).
Go Bolts!
The Wings are very likely to give Nielsen a lot of money now as he is looking like the top FA on the board. I just hope Holland doesnt pull a Holland and tack a couple extra face palming years at the end of the contract.
The entire time I was hearing it was between Toronto and Buffalo