On Frozen Blog

During last night’s Versus broadcast of the Devils-Penguins, Bill Clement led an engrossing, post-game roundtable discussion of the future contract challenges awaiting new Penguins’ GM Ray Shero. The recent high-end selloffs in Colorado, Tampa, and Ottawa are really inappropriate comparisons with what Shero will confront, because in those instances, marquee players most often were at, near, or beyond 30 years of age. And whereas GMs around the league have conspicuously refrained from pilfering the young Restricted Free Agent assets of rival teams, the talent-oozing quartet of Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Staal in Pittsburgh will most assuredly invite some notable exceptions to this longstanding rule.

Bobby Clarke or no Bobby Clarke in management somewhere.

The first item to mention is the albatross that is Sergei Gonchar’s pact. Absent Shero possessing some incriminating blackmail of another GM with which he could liberate himself from that mess, he’s on the hook for $5 million annually to Giveaway Gonch through 2009-10. If you just gulped loud enough to shake your office plants, you’re not alone.

Coming out of the gate in their respective entry contracts, all of Fleury, Crosby, and Malkin are slotted as you’d expect: basically the rookie max of $3.8 million per for Sidney and Evgeni, with Sid’s deal up after the ‘07-’08 season, and Malkin’s ending the spring after. While Fleury’s base salary is $1.3 million per, and ends after the ‘07-’08 season, his bonuses push the Pens’ cap hit at something close to $3 million per. In Staal, it appears Shero got quite lucky. He’s earning $2.2 million per season through ‘08-’09; for a second-overall pick (like Malkin), particularly of this family pedigree, I would have expected a richer pact.

All of this, though, is fairly moot, because what matters most is the value these respective players have the very first offseason they enter RFA status. Today it’s unimaginable that any of them will receive followup contract offers from Shero less than Gonchar’s $5 million per, no matter how universally ludicrous that deal is acknowledged to be. Moreover, the achievements of Sid and Malkin ‚Äî even at this early vantage ‚Äî highly suggest such largess plus on the merits.

As good as Staal looks in the NHL this morning, he’s still just 18, and reassigning him back to the CHL late this weekend may be necessitated simply for future payroll stability as well as RFA exposure cover. But that reassignment, were it to occur, undoubtedly will competitively harm this year’s Pens, who this morning sit in first place in their division, with Staal playing magnificently.

Surrendering five first round picks for signing a premiere young talent has ever been viewed a daunting and dissuasive defense against the practice, but who among the league’s 29 other clubs wouldn’t in two years’ time for Sidney Crosby? Or for Malkin? Or perhaps for Staal ‚Äî especially if forecasts this past summer of his actually being better than brother Eric prove true?

The somewhat painful question this morning confronting Shero is: do I keep the productive and physically mature Staal up and thereby expose him too to very early, very-much-in-his-prime free agent status?

It’s interesting to ponder as comparison the contract situations the Caps are in relative to their high-end talent. GM McPhee must confront contracts for Zubrus and Backstrom this offseason, new ones for both Alexanders the following, and perhaps, just maybe, another deal for Kolzig. But Alexander Semin’s two-year stint in Russia delivered the silver lining blessing of delaying his UFA status in ways impossible for Crosby or Malkin ‚Äî and perhaps Staal too ‚Äî to achieve in Pittsburgh.

You might counter this concern by pointing out that the league’s salary cap could rise over the next couple of years, as it did this season from last. True. But the league is experiencing some eyebrow-raising attendance woes early in ‘06′-07, and so it’s just as likely that the cap could constrict upon Shero and his rival GMs. Additionally, Shero has the omnipresent black cloud of where his team will play its games after this season. Can you imagine trying to pay all those young, widely coveted stars while remaining in the luxury box-less Igloo?

Thankfully and luckily for Pens’ fans, the current contracts for their young guns and talented backstopper have somewhat staggered terminations, but all that may serve to due is delay some inevitable pain.