On Frozen Blog

July 1 signifies more than just the loss and acquisition of players who can make or break a franchise. It is the point of the offseason where what happened last year really no longer means a thing. While yes, we all still remember when the Penguins won the Cup and when the Caps lost that tough Game 7, but it no longer has any effect on what happens next year. 

Many would like to believe that the NHL Draft is truly the place for a franchise’s new beginning, and there’s some truth to that. But it is hard for that to happen since the event is tied to the past: Draft order is determined by where clubs finished the season before, reminding everyone of who were the best and worst teams. And with 95-plus percent of draft selections, their impact in the league is years away.

Now with free agency in full bloom, teams like Chicago and Toronto have already added difference-makers to their rosters. The free agent market oftentimes has less to do with success in the past, and more to do with available money today and potential to win in the future. We saw that with players like Mattias Ohlund, who signed with Tampa Bay, and Nik Antoropov, who joined the Atlanta Thashers. Mike Komisarek left vaunted and winning Montreal to try and be a lead part in the Leafs’ (hoped for instant) rebuild. These players signed with new clubs not only because they could make more money but also because the franchises seem poised to compete in a few years. 

Free agency also brought a new piece to the Capitals, with Mike Knuble signing two-year deal. He brings a new look to one of the things the Capitals struggled with down the stretch, the offense and power play. The addition of Knuble brings in a force that can stand in the front of the net and create havoc in front of the goaltender. Being unable to get pucks to the net was the biggest criticism of the Caps last year and they were quick to address it on day one of free agency.
A big pocketbook can sometimes be a negative during free agency, though, and the Caps have been victim of this in the past with signings such as Dmitri Mironov and Michael Nylander, perhaps even Jose Theodore. 

This year the big free agency winners or losers could be the Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers, who signed Marian Hossa and Marian Gaborik respectively. Both of these players have the ability to score goals, but they both have major drawbacks. A drink at Starbucks has been named after Hossa (it comes without a Cup), and Gaborik has been on and off of the IR for the last few years.
(Little mentioned in his signing, it seems to me, is how he left one of the best sheets of ice in the league in Minnesota for one of the worst on Broadway — not the gamble with a gimpy groin most GMs would take, you’d think.) It was money that ultimately lured the two top free agents to their respective teams, and it could be fool’s money that may ultimately doom the signing clubs. Both of these players have huge salary cap hits, and if they fail produce they would join a long litany of high profile, high cost free agents who’ve failed to deliver value for the investment. Both players would be practically untradeable and take up money that could be used towards productive talent.

Ah, the New York Rangers. Since Glen Sather’s arrival as GM, have they ever allowed a July to pass as mere spectators to free agency? It’s hard to imagine them substantively reshaping their roster in any way but with free agency. 

Once upon a time, to a degree, the Capitals entered free agency as reasonably heavy bidders. Long before Washington knew the promise of being a legitimate hockey town this wasn’t a Tier I destination of choice for free agents. You would hear the Caps linked to pursuit of some name (i.e., expensive) free agents (in-their-prime Pierre Turgeon and Jeremy Roenick come to mind), but always they seemed to be bidding bridesmaids each July. To some extent I think this bred the aggressive move to secure Jaromir Jagr, which certainly wasn’t a “hockey trade” and far closer to the pursuit of a free agent. And certainly Jagr’s tenure in D.C. reminded (haunted) Caps’ fans of a failed hired gun. 

This July the Caps could have moved players to open up cap space and spent more freely in free agency, but they chose to take a more conservative, and I think smarter, route. They used as little money as possible to fill their biggest need. There is seemingly little risk and potential downside to the signing of Knuble, which goes a long way to explaining why the signing was so widely praised in the media and judged to be among the most astute of the early free agency acquisitions. His move to Washington gives the Caps a fresh new start at a Cup run.
The promise of free agency, after all, is that securing valued and veteran talent today is about beginning a promising tomorrow.