After spending much of the last week insisting that he was not shopping PK Subban, Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin distinguished himself as both a liar and a fool by flipping Subban to Nashville in a one-for-one deal for Shea Weber. How is this a bad a decision? Let us count the ways:
- Montréal "gains" a 30-yr old top-pairing guy who is juuusst cresting the hump. Make no mistake, Weber is a fine player, but I believe we'll see his impact decline from here on in.
- They'll be paying Weber just under $8 mil until he is 40 years old. Realistically, how many years has he got left in him? Six, give or take a year?
- Subban is only three years younger than Weber but those three years are squarely in the middle of what should still be his best years.
- Subban earns a little more than Weber at $9 mil/yr but has only six years remaining on that deal. This may be important as PK will then be 33 and Nashville GM David Poile will have a good sense of how much gas is left in the tank. Probably. This is strategically significant.
- Bergevin just jettisoned the most popular player on the club, earning him no goodwill from Habs fans. PK donated a truck full of cash to a children's' hospital, for goodness' sake... what's Bergevin done, again?
The most ridiculous thing about this deal, and this is pure speculation but I think it's likely rooted in truth, is that the Habs' coach, Michel Therrien, likely has his greasy thumb print all over this deal. Granted, the Montréal sports media is basically TMZ filmed at a practice arena, but all signs pointed to a personality conflict between the coach and Subban, as in PK has a personality and Therrien doesn't. But seriously, how sad is Therrien to feel the need to discard an elite defenseman who is still developing? Sure, maybe PK doesn't toe the line all the time, and maybe he's straining at the leash a little too much...but when someone's that good you bloody let them. Possibly worse, now that I think of it, is the possibility of Marc Bergevin having been talked into this by Therrien. I'm not sure why Bergevin is so quick to have the back of a guy who persisted on trotting out a power play that included a player who failed score a single point in the season's first 32 games.
I don't have a dog in this race at all, but it's pretty easy to see that it's A Bad Deal for The Oilers. As above, there were faint rumblings of Hall being uncoachable, and another situation, perhaps, where the coach has to suck it up, take the bad with the good and work with that. Hall is a thoroughbred and, while he put up good numbers with a pretty dismal supporting cast, some of his best play has been when he wasn't playing for The Oilers (international stuff). The Devils are going to be better with Hall than with they were with Larsson but I'm not convinced that The Oilers improved their awful defense enough to make this deal remotely worthwhile. Yeah, Larsson fills a need that The Oilers definitely need to address, but at what cost? Well, now we know.
The only thing I can say in Oilers' GM Peter Chiarelli's defense is that he's perhaps looking ahead to future salary costs. McDavid, Draisaitl and, in a few years, Puljujarvi are going to cost them bigtime, and the fact that Hall is off while Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle remain indicates that Chiarelli intends to persevere with these two. Seriously, Pete, you couldn't get an Eberle + Yakupov deal done?
Thing Three: TSN is Ridiculous
Apropos of almost nothing and just a bit of whimsy, earlier this week these stories appeared simultaneously on the TSN hockey webpage: (these headlines are all down, now, so I might be paraphrasing them a bit)
- Tampa has Inside Track on re-signing Stamkos- Stamkos unlikely to re-sign with Tampa
- What it Will Take for Toronto to sign Stamkos
- Red Wings close to signing Stamkos
Could these not have all been condensed into one "story" titled "Stamkos: We Have No Idea".
Thing Four: I Have Good News and I Have Bad News
The Blackhawks re-signed the not-so-ageless-but-whatever Michal Rozsival (1 yr, $600k) and the utterly-devoid-of-talent-or-anything-worthwhile Brandon Mashinter (1 yr, whatever they're paying is that much too much). Great, having that goomba around will certainly help develop Motte, Schmaltz, Hartman or whoever's spot Mashinter takes.
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