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Cream Of The Crop: 2009 Defensive Ufas


DA_Champion

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The complete list of 2009 Defensive UFAs is available here:

http://nhlnumbers.com/freeagents.php?team=...&status=ufa

The thread for offensive UFAs is here: http://forum.canadiens.com/index.php?showt...p;#entry1391644

Here are the offensive ones that stand out imho:

Name Age Tm. Pos. Salary Cap Hit

Beauchemin, Francois 29 ANA D UFA 1.650 1.650

Niedermayer, Scott 35 ANA D UFA 6.750 6.750

Havelid, Niclas 36 ATL D UFA 2.700 2.900

Schneider, Mathieu 40 ATL D UFA 5.625 5.750

Spacek, Jaroslav 35 BUF D UFA 3.333 3.300

Aucoin, Adrian 35 CGY D UFA 4.000 4.000

Backman, Christian 29 CLB D UFA 2.300 3.400

Leopold, Jordan 28 COL D UFA 1.500 1.500

Bouwmeester, Jay 25 FLA D UFA 4.875 4.875

Boynton, Nick 30 FLA D UFA 2.950 2.950

Bergeron, Marc-Andre 28 MIN D UFA 1.116 1.691

Komisarek, Mike 27 MTL D UFA 1.700 1.900

Koistinen, Ville 27 NAS D UFA 0.700 0.700

Kuba, Filip 32 OTT D UFA 3.000 3.000

Morris, Derek 30 PHX D UFA 3.917 3.950

Ohlund, Mattias 32 VAN D UFA 3.500 3.500

Semenov, Alexei 28 SJS D UFA 0.650 0.650

The habs have the following players signed through the end of next season:

Player - Cap Hit

Andrei Markov - 5.75

Roman Hamrlik - 5.5

Josh Gorges - 1.1

Ryan O'Byrne - 0.94

Matthieu Carle - 0.635

Yannick Weber- 0.613

My Conclusion:

We badly need to resign Komisarek. If we don't resign Komisarek there are a few comparable players on that list, but the competition will be fierce. JayBo is top of this year's class, but after that it looks like Komo is tied for second. Judging by what happened to Wade Redden, Brian Campbell who are two comparables, JayBo could receive something like 8 years, 60 million dollar offers... maybe less as the effective cap space* is declining substantially next year. We may need to overpay Komisarek (e.g. 5 years 26 million), as we will either have to overpay for someone or have our D decline in quality.

If one looks at the thread on D-men here:

http://forum.canadiens.com/index.php?showtopic=22116

We would benefit from signing one of the solid but not necessarily elite-D to a 3 year contract, e.g. Christian Backman, Francois Beauchemin, Jordan Leopold, Nick Boynton, or Filip Kuba... Actually looking at Kuba's stats he is having an excellent season (36 GP, 25 points and +10 on a bad team) so he will likely carry a heavy price tag next year. All of those guys are listed as being at least 6 feet which if true would be good for our small team. Alternatively we could resign 1 of of the mediocre 3 (Brisebois, Dandeneault, Bouillon) to a 1-year contract and hope for the best from our prospects or the 2010 UFA crop. That option is riskier but has a bigger long-term potential to benefit the team in my opinion. We could also try Shawn Belle.

*Effective cap space means the cap space the teams have to expand their rosters by, in previous years cap was expanding by 7 million per year, and now it will likely decline by about 2 million, which means an average differential of 9 million in how teams can shop for new UFAs to add to their roster.

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Meh, have LA throw in a high pick then or Brian Boyle or whatever, Pacioretty really isn't anything THAT special, but you're right I probably undervalued him, I wrote that pretty quickly.

In the case the Kings would want Pacioretty, I'd ask for Jack Johnson from them. I would probably try to balance the trade by adding a Hab defensive prospect and a Kings' mid-level pick (with which TT can do wonders). I believe Johnson is injured at the moment, though.

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Resigning Komisarek is a must. I hope Gainey gets contract negotiations going before the end of the regular season with him. He's starting to regain his form, and showing why he is such an integral part of our club. I hope the All-star game nod doesn't muddle with the money offered/accepted between Gainey and his agent.

Beyond that, I would like to find another good puck-mover. Someone who can play the PP. I don't think we have enough money to go after someone like Bouwmeester, unless we were going to move an asset like Hamrlik before the season started. We cannot, in my opinion, sink around $20 million into our top-4. It's just too much considering all of the U.F.A.s we have next year. Bouwmeester would be pretty sweet, though!

Beauchemin might be an alright idea. I recall him having one great year with Anaheim, but haven't followed him since then.

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What is the maximum people think we should spend on the D-corps?

12 forwards, 6 defensemen, spare, 2 goalies, a 55 million dollar cap and everybody getting the same salary our top 6 would receive 15.7 million, so let's say 13 million on the top 4.

Right now we're spending 5.75+5.5+1.7+1.1 = 14.05 million.

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Resigning Komisarek is a must. I hope Gainey gets contract negotiations going before the end of the regular season with him. He's starting to regain his form, and showing why he is such an integral part of our club. I hope the All-star game nod doesn't muddle with the money offered/accepted between Gainey and his agent.

Beyond that, I would like to find another good puck-mover. Someone who can play the PP. I don't think we have enough money to go after someone like Bouwmeester, unless we were going to move an asset like Hamrlik before the season started. We cannot, in my opinion, sink around $20 million into our top-4. It's just too much considering all of the U.F.A.s we have next year. Bouwmeester would be pretty sweet, though!

Beauchemin might be an alright idea. I recall him having one great year with Anaheim, but haven't followed him since then.

I wouldn't mind Beauchemin at all, he's a hard-nosed solid player with a fairly decent shot. He'd round out our top-four very nicely.

I was reluctant to respond because I agree with these positions and they aren't popular. Simple truth is that we will have around $20M signed on D next season if we keep Markov, Hamrlik and Komisarek. We are also lucky to have Gorges. One of the best bargains in the league. Otherwise, we would be in a worse position. If we are really looking to add a defensive rental, we are fine. If we are looking to add a longer term defensive solution, we are in trouble.

Another simple truth, is that our defensive core is not dynamic enough offensively. Markov is the only significant contributor from the point and we have two defensemen with very limited offensive potential.

We currently have :

Two 2-way D men. (Brisebois and Hamrlik)

One offensive D man. (Markov)

Four defensive D men. (Komisarek, Gorges, Bouillon, O' Byrne)

If you assign a general sliding meter to each defenseman. You end up with about a 2:7 ratio of offense to defense.

In an even matchup, you would expect your D men to be playing offensively 50% of the time, or a 1:2 ratio. In order to meet that expectation, we need around an 18% increase in offensive potential from our defense.

The per game average offensive contribution from our blue line is .33 points per game.

Markov .80

Hamrlik .33

Brisebois .31

Gorges .24

Komisarek .17

Bouillon .15

O' Byrne .14

Now let's focus our needs further, because we are really only looking to balance our top 4.

That means a .12 increase in points per game contribution for each top 4 D man. (Or a total of .48)

Markov's production compensates for .30 of that amount, leaving us with a required increase of .18.

We can swap Hamrlik with a D man that has a PPG (point per game average) over .50.

We can swap Gorges with a D man that has a PPG over .42.

We can swap Komisarek with a D man that has a PPG over .35.

Start here for ideas of who we need to acquire to balance our blue line dynamic: D by PPG rankings

Upgrading Hamrlik would require a (roughly) top 25-35 PPG D man and would give us $5M to do so.

Upgrading Gorges would require a (roughly) top 50-60 PPG D man and would give us $1M to do so.

Upgrading Komisarek would require a (roughly) top 70-80 D man and would give us $1.7M to do so.

Obviously there are other considerations and factors, I'm just trying to explain my point and provide the reasons for my conclusion by detailing it.

I suggested moving Hamrlik to make room for an offensive defenseman. That would not only allow us to maintain our defensive strength in Komisarek and Gorges, but would permit us the salary necessary to keep salary down on our blue line. The correct move is to acquire a defenseman that is ranked around top 30 in PPG. We could afford to maintain that salary for the same length as Hamrlik's current contract and depending on the salary of the acquired player, could even free up money for re-signing Komisarek, which ensures our defensive core remains dynamic for the next couple of seasons.

Keeping Hamrlik and adding another defenseman would be perfectly acceptable as a rental, provided we have the current cap space to do so, but we would be hard pressed in terms of salary if we expect to keep that player beyond this year.

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What is the maximum people think we should spend on the D-corps?

12 forwards, 6 defensemen, spare, 2 goalies, a 55 million dollar cap and everybody getting the same salary our top 6 would receive 15.7 million, so let's say 13 million on the top 4.

Right now we're spending 5.75+5.5+1.7+1.1 = 14.05 million.

Let's see... ^_^

We have our number 1, Markov, at $5.750.

We have our number 3 (or) 4, Hamrlik, at $5.500.

If we can resign Komisarek at $4.000 (Please, dear God), then I would try to keep the next signing to $3.000 or less. Someone who can move the puck, and play the PP, but who won't be responsible for logging huge minutes. We know Gorges can play with Hamrlik in a pinch. What we need is a reliable 5/6 guy, who can step into the top-4 role when required, and manage the 2nd PP unit effectively.

Easier said than done, I guess. :lol:

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Meh, have LA throw in a high pick then or Brian Boyle or whatever, Pacioretty really isn't anything THAT special, but you're right I probably undervalued him, I wrote that pretty quickly.

:lol: Im starting to wonder if you know anything about hockey, Pacioretty is the kind of young prospect that we need to build our team around (at the forward position)

We got way too many small guys who don't hit (too many similar players) on this team.

We need players like him big time!

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:lol: Im starting to wonder if you know anything about hockey,

:lol::lol::lol:

You're funny

Pacioretty is the kind of young prospect that we need to build our team around (at the forward position)

We got way too many small guys who don't hit (too many similar players) on this team.

We need players like him big time!

Why exactly? Where is this magic formula that you must have a big guy in order to be successful?

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:lol: Im starting to wonder if you know anything about hockey, Pacioretty is the kind of young prospect that we need to build our team around (at the forward position)

We got way too many small guys who don't hit (too many similar players) on this team.

We need players like him big time!

I agree, I like patches size, was actually impressed with his size. Even though we have some promising players in Hamilton, I can only think of 1 who might actually rise to a star player in the NHL. I would trade patches to get ourselves a puck moving "D" with a good shot.

We could use his size, but I don't think he'll be anything more than a 25 goal scorer. 25 goal scores are a dime a dozen in this league.

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We could use his size, but I don't think he'll be anything more than a 25 goal scorer. 25 goal scores are a dime a dozen in this league.

????

  • There were only 63 NHL players who scored that many last year out of ~700 players who played most of the season.
  • He could be a 30 goal scorer.
  • He is on an $875, 000 salary through two more seasons and not a UFA for several more years.
  • We had 4 on the Habs last year (Kovalev, Plekanec, A Kostitsyn and Chris Higgins)
  • Assists matter too
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  • 2 weeks later...
Resign Komisarek, trade Pacioretty for Matt Greene or D'Agostini+ one of our middle of the line D prospects.

Problem solved.

Not sure is I want loose dags or patches yet. What is left here on the far, is not looking all that great. Trade chipper first or Weber

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:lol::lol::lol:

You're funny

Why exactly? Where is this magic formula that you must have a big guy in order to be successful?

It's his type of player the habs lack.He balances them in a good way.I wouldn't go as to say Pacioretty is the next Eric Cole but he certainly is the same style of player.I know the habs team I've been watching for years now could use a few more Eric Cole type forwards.Even if they only have that potential for now,I'll take it.

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You don't need one, you need a few.

Remember last year playoffs? :angry:

Yeah, Price couldn't stop a beach ball and Biron was amazing!

+ Umberger was on fire during 5 games.

The difference was there. Otherwise, Habs played better than the Flyers and should have win.

The pens were not a tough team last season. The same thing apply for the Red Wings.

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