The Boston Bruins clearly know what they are doing when it comes to signing their own players to long term contracts.
In a perfect world, teams would be able to re-sign their own players to short term, incentive laden deals – but we all know that’s not the way it works in sports and especially in the salary cap ear of the National Hockey League.
The deal the Boston Bruins gave to Marc Savard on Tuesday is a long one – seven years is a long time when the player is 32 years old. But when you break this deal down, it’s a shrewd move by Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli by the way it is structured.
First, any contract for Savard at this time is a good one. He could have become a free agent next summer but opted for the long-term security of the seven-year offer Chiarelli gave him.
The deal is worth slightly more than US$28 million. That’s an average of about $4.2 million per year for a player who had a team best 88 points last season, making him one of the few point-per-game players in the NHL. That’s value.
But the deal gets better from Boston’s point of view. The contract is worth about $14 million over the first two years, with another $14 million for the final five years. Savard will be 39 in the contract's final year.
But when that happens, his salary will be down to about $1 million a season.
By accepting a cap hit of just $4.2 million per season, he allows the Bruins the financial flexibility to go out and sign some free agent help in the coming years. Savard could have got a lot more on the open market than he got from the Bruins and also signed a deal that helps his team get better.
Similar deals were signed by Marian Hossa (Chicago), Chris Pronger (Philadelphia) and Roberto Luongo (Vancouver). The player gets a ton of guaranteed money, the team gets some real cost certainty and some flexibility, and with the contract so front loaded, everybody wins.
Managing a team in the salary cap era in the NHL is really tough, and nobody really likes giving out seven year deals because you never know. But Peter Chiarelli has done his homework and has done a great job with this signing – Savard is happy and so are the Bruins.
Savard has his money and Chiarelli has more money to sign players to help him out in the coming years – it doesn’t get any better than that in the salary cap era.
Every once in awhile people will complain about the state of Canadian hockey, and that Canadian hockey players aren’t what they used to be.
People who do that sure don’t watch the world junior hockey championships.
Canada has won five straight gold medals at the event and will attempt to make it six straight this Christmas at the 2010 world junior hockey championships in Saskatchewan.
Hockey Canada named 36 players on Wednesday to take part in Canada’s National Junior selection camp from December 12-16, 2009 in Regina, Sask. Canada will play its first game of the 2010 IIHF World Junior Championship on Boxing Day, December 26 versus Latvia, a game that will be broadcast LIVE by TSN/RDS and on The FAN Radio Network.
That is a remarkable achievement, those five gold medal wins. Critics of the event point out that it’s “only junior hockey” but that doesn’t matter. The world junior hockey championships are like the World Cup of Soccer – it’s the best junior aged players in the world all together at the same time. The only top players who aren’t there are in the NHL, and that is just a handful.
It’s a pure world championship to be sure. And while there are only five countries that are legitimate contenders, five straight titles is a tremendous achievement in a tournament like this.
Canada has medaled at eleven straight IIHF World Junior Championships including the five gold medal performances in the last five championships – 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, along with silver medals in 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2004, and bronze medals in 2000 and 2001.
Think about that for a second – 11 straight medals, five gold, four silver and two bronze medals. And prior to that, they had another five straight gold medal run in the 1990s!
It’s never easy however, and it won’t be this year. Just about every year there’s at least one major scare and a lot of close and hard fought games. But Canada has found a way to win this event again and again, and I expect them to do just that once again this Christmas.
Millions of fans across the country will be watching this Christmas, and they will see that there’s nothing wrong with Canadian hockey, especially at the junior level – nothing wrong at all.