The ten types of bad contracts (and how to avoid them)

On Tuesday, San Jose Sharks defenceman Brent Burns signed an eight-year extension that will pay him $64 million and carry an $8 million cap hit.

It’s a huge contract — the biggest since Jamie Benn‘s deal this past summer and almost certainly the largest that we’ll see signed during the 2016-17 season.

But none of that really matters.

What fans want to know about the Burns contract is this: Is it a good deal or a bad one?

We can't know for sure yet, although we can already compare it to those of his peers.

The early consensus seems to point to a deal that carries a fair cap hit for a player of his caliber, but with a length that makes it a high-risk gamble on a player who'll have turned 40 by the time the contract expires. Only time will tell whether the deal ends up being worth the risk for the Sharks.

But even if the Burns deal does end up backfiring for San Jose, they'll have plenty of company. The NHL is littered with bad contracts; every team has at least a couple.

Twelve seasons into the salary cap era, you'd think general managers would be learning how to avoid some of these mistakes. But we still see them made all the time, and they usually fall into one of a few categories.

So today, let's look through those categories, and see if we can give our friends in NHL front offices some tips on avoiding them.

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THE JULY 1 MELTDOWN

The contract: This is the most obvious category, with a big chunk of the league's worst deals falling into it.

To put it simply, NHL GMs do their worst work when unrestricted free agency opens on July 1. You target a player, the bidding war starts, and next thing you know you're paying way more than you meant to.

We've actually seen a drop in truly terrible July 1 deals over the years, largely thanks to the new negotiation window that opens up a few days in advance. But we still see more mistakes made on that one day than any other.

Recent examples: Scott Gomez. Wade Redden. Danny Briere. Brad Richards. Stephen Weiss. Loui Eriksson. Andrew Ladd.

How to avoid it: Don't let anybody in the front office anywhere near a phone on July 1.

Seriously, how long will it be before some GM (or owner) makes this an official team policy? Every year, we see teams pay through the nose for players on July 1, and every year we see great bargains still sitting around a few days later for a fraction of the price.

Every GM thinks they can be the one who makes the smart deal on UFA day, but history has shown us that most of them are wrong.

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PAYING FOR INTANGIBLES

The contract: Look, intangibles exist. Just because something is hard to measure doesn't mean it's not important, and that's especially true in a sport like hockey.

Leadership matters. So does work ethic. And yes, even heart. But the waiver wire is filled with guys with plenty of heart and leadership. Paying top dollar for it rarely works out well.

Recent examples: Ryan Kesler. Ryan Callahan. Casey Cizikas.

How to avoid it: If your star player is also your hard-working leader, then great, go ahead and pay him. But if not, smart GMs will focus on pouring as much talent as possible into the core and save the intangibles for the (far cheaper) depth pieces.

If there are two mistakes on this list that can torpedo a team's cap situation, it's paying for intangibles and the July 1 meltdown. In fact, it's hard to even imagine anything worse…

Oh, hey, what's this next section…

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THE JULY 1 MELTDOWN THAT INVOLVES PAYING FOR INTANGIBLES

The contract: Oh no.

Recent examples: Dave Bolland. Deryk Engelland. Ryane Clowe. Dale Weise. Clayton Stoner. Stephane Robidas. And the worst of them all: David Clarkson.

How to avoid it: If anyone in your front office so much as utters the words "compete level" on July 1, fire them immediately.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

The Golden Knights finally have a name and a logo. How'd they do?

After several months of waiting, followed by an additional several weeks of waiting for reasons nobody was quite clear on, and then a few more minutes of waiting while they tried to figure out how to get their video to play, the NHL’s newest expansion team finally has an identity. They’re the Golden Knights, as unveiled Tuesday night at what the league hyped as “historic event”.

Of course, we kind of already knew that; the name had been rumored for a while now, thanks to the team filing for trademarks on various Knight-related monikers back in the summer. But still, making it official counts for something, and the team also used yesterday’s event as an opportunity to unveil their logo and team colors.

So how’d they do? Well, the event itself was a disaster, one that featured two failed attempts to play the announcement video. For an agonizing few minutes, it looked like the team had gone with the “Placeholders”.

They eventually got the video working, although not before an extended stalling job by a clearly seething Gary Bettman. Oh, and while everyone was waiting the team web site went live and spoiled the surprise. Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

But that should all be forgotten eventually. What about the name and logo itself? Well, this being the NHL, we have a long history of new teams to look back on. Many of those franchises ended up being laughable failures, and while you can’t necessarily blame that on a name or a logo, every little bit helps. So let’s look back at some of the lessons learned from those teams that came before, and figure out whether the Las Vegas brains trust managed to get their first major decisions right.

The name

What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? No, it wouldn’t, because sports teams with dumb names are embarrassing. The hockey world has had its share of examples, although to our credit we’ve never hit rock bottom and named a team the Pelicans like some other sports we could mention. Still, this is the big one, and you want to make sure you get it right.

The idea name will carry a taste of local flavor, without getting too cute. You want something creative, but not silly. Originality is good, but you can carried away with fancy spellings or singular names that will be confusing to write about.

And most importantly of all, you can’t just take the most popular team in the league and try to steal their name. Las Vegas almost made that mistake; reports from August had them leaning towards going with something based on the word “Hawks”. Thankfully, hockey fans laughed at the transparent attempt to hone in on Chicago’s territory and the idea was dropped. Instead, we got the Golden Knights.

When it was done right: In general, NHL team names have been getting better with age. They were all over the map in the early days of expansion, largely because they were left to the whims of owners or fan surveys. These days, much more thought goes into the naming process, and we end up with names ranging from the solid (“Lightning”) to the vaguely cool (“Predators”) to the lame-until-someone-explains-it-to-you (“Thrashers”). Personally, I’ve always like Blue Jackets, although I realize I may be in a minority there.

When it was done wrong: Sometimes, teams can get too clever, like when Pittsburgh went with “Penguins” even though there aren’t any nearby. Other times, they’re not clever enough, like when Winnipeg’s WHA entry went with “Jets” even though there was already an NFL team called that (and also, Winnipeg didn’t have airports, paved roads or running water until 2013). Both of those names are cool now, but it took some time.

But nothing has ever been worse than when the new Anaheim franchise named itself after a terrible Disney movie, christening themselves The Mighty Ducks in 1993. Everyone over the age of six hated it, and the team dropped the “Mighty” in 2006.

How’d Vegas do?: We’ll give them a “not bad” here.

Golden Knights is a reasonably cool name. Most fans will just call them the Knights, which has long been the go-to choice for kids who needed a fake name for a team in a computer sports game that wasn’t already being used somewhere. And “Vegas Knights” is kind of a pun, I guess. Sure, something about gambling would have been better, but the NHL apparently said that was a no-go, so here we are.

Owner Bill Foley went further in the press release, babbling on about how “We selected ‘Knights’ because knights are the defenders of the realm and protect those who cannot defend themselves. They are the elite warrior class.” That’s nonsense, the sort of thing that a marketing department with too much time on its hands comes up with and slips into a press release when nobody’s looking. But Foley clearly never actually said that, nor did any other actual human being, so we won’t hold it against him.

One interesting note: The official name drops the “Las” from “Las Vegas”, which is kind of weird. You just know they’re going to get all cranky whenever anyone calls them the Las Vegas Golden Knights. So let’s all agree to do that as often as possible.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Handing out some quarter-mark awards

Teams around the NHL have started hitting the 20-game mark, with most of the league reaching that milestone over the next few days.

That means that this is the week when we’re officially a quarter of the way into the season.

And that means three things.

First, we can stop prefacing every observation with “It’s still early, but…”

Second, it will be fun to spend the next few days making repeated references to this being the "quarter pole" just to annoy the sort of pedants who get worked up over that that kind of thing.

And third, sports writing bylaws dictate that we have to hand out some awards.

Let's take care of that last one today. We'll do the standard NHL awards, plus a few more to keep it interesting.

And we'll start with the big one.

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MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

MVP awards are always fun because we get to argue over what "value" actually means.

Is it just the best player? The guy who's most important to his team? The player with the biggest impact on the standings? Luckily, through the first quarter this year, we can go with all of the above.

Names worth considering: Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Mark Scheifele.

But the winner is… Carey Price.

The Montreal Canadiens seem like two different teams these days. There's the non-Price version, which is fine – they're 3-3-1 in games that Al Montoya starts, and other than that one disaster in Columbus, they've been competitive in all of them. The Montoya version of the Habs is OK.

But the Carey Price version is darn near unbeatable, picking up 23 of a possible 24 points in his dozen starts.

His numbers are ridiculous – his .950 save percentage is the best among full-time starters – and he hasn't shown any signs of lingering problems from last year's injury.

Mix in his dominant performance at the World Cup of Hockey, and he's entering that Dominik Hasek zone where teams feel like they'll need a shutout from their own goalie just to have a chance.

Hart voters tend to like to cast their ballots for players who put up big scoring numbers. But anyone who can single-handedly transform a team from merely mediocre to Cup favorite is an easy MVP call, so Price gets the nod here.

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BEST GOALTENDER

It goes without saying that if Price wins MVP, he'll almost certainly also take home the Vezina, too.

But for sake of argument — and to avoid just writing the same thing two sections in a row — let's pretend that he has to make room for somebody else to take the goaltending honours.

Names worth considering: Corey Crawford, Sergei Bobrovsky, Devan Dubnyk.

But the winner is… Tuukka Rask.

This one's a much closer call, and you could make a case for any of the guys listed above and probably a few more.

But Rask is putting up some of the best numbers of his career, and he's doing it on a team that most of us didn't view as anything more than an also-ran. Maybe that's all the Boston Bruins are, and Rask is just papering over a flawed lineup. But that's what you want your star goalie to do, and Rask has been up to the task so far this year.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend wrap: The mild west

In the NHL, we’ve spent the better part of the last two decades knowing we could count on at least one simple truth: When it comes to the conferences, West was best.

The conference boasted the best teams, and most of the best players. They didn’t always win the Stanley Cup, although they did win most of them.

And even when they didn’t, it was the exception that proved the rule.

Sure, an Eastern team won this year, we could say, but look how much easier their path to the final was.

And maybe more importantly, the Western Conference just had the better style of play. Whatever type of hockey you liked – bigger, faster, more offensive, more creative – you could point to the West and say that you saw it there.

Eastern Conference action was fine most nights, but if you wanted to see the really good stuff, you had to stick around for the late show.

In recent years, it started to feel like we'd all embraced the idea of Western superiority a little too tightly, as much out of force of habit as anything else. But the reality is that there was a lot of truth to the idea. When I crunched the numbers a few seasons ago, it was clear that the West really was dominating, and had been for years.

But recently, the trend seems to be showing cracks.

The East has won three straight Presidents' Trophies, and last year the Penguins finally snapped the Stanley Cup streak of the dominant Blackhawks/Kings tag team.

And this year, early as it may be, there's really no comparison. The East has been the far better conference.

You can see that trend at the top of any power rankings — including the ones in this column. The East is taking up most of the top spots, as teams like Montreal, New York Rangers and Pittsburgh churn along. That continues as you scan down the standings; Eastern teams hold down nine of the top eleven spots in terms of points, and each of the top four in terms of goals differential.

Out west, which team would you really consider dominant?

There are the Blackhawks, as always, although even their success has been accompanied by a sky-high PDO that has to come back to earth soon. Other than Chicago, there isn't a team in the conference that stands out. Setting loser points aside, eight teams in the East have at least two more wins than losses. In the West, only Chicago can make that claim.

Meanwhile, the East is giving up its grip on the bottom of the standings, where its teams used to litter the lottery odds charts. So far this season, it's teams like the Flames, Coyotes and Canucks that are struggling at least as badly as the Sabres, Islanders or Hurricanes, if not worse.

Again, it's still early, and a winning streak here or there can alter perception fairly quickly. But it sure looks like the East is headed towards finally staking a claim as the league's powerhouse conference, at least as far as the regular season goes. It sure took them long enough.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they're headed towards Stanley Cup favorite status.

5. Tampa Bay Lightning (12-6-1, plus-15 true goals differential*) – Doctors say that Steven Stamkos is out for anywhere between four and six months, so remember to look surprised when he just happens to be cleared to return to the lineup on the day of their first playoff game.

4. Pittsburgh Penguins (11-4-3, plus-2) – Their home-and-home showdown with the Rangers this week should go a long way towards sorting out the top of the Metro pecking order.

3. New York Rangers (13-5-1, plus-32) – Speaking of which, remember when home-and-homes between division rivals used to happen on back-to-back nights so you knew there'd be some bad blood? Sure glad the NHL got rid of that.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab bag: Why the NHL's marketing fails

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Why the NHL's marketing sucks and always will
- My favorite part of every new arena proposal
- An obscure player who shows up on a surprising list
- The week's three comedy stars
- And we travel back to 1992 to learn a new language with a teenaged Eric Lindros

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports