COMMENTARYGleason: Sabres get a lesson in business
By Bucky Gleason
In case you hadn’t heard, Joe Thornton signed a three-year contract extension worth $21.6 million with the San Jose Sharks on Sunday. The former Hart Trophy winner had one year remaining on his contract, but the Sharks didn’t want to risk the possibility of losing their best player.
It made such good sense that the Calgary Flames decided to follow suit. They’re working on a long-term contract extension with winger Jarome Iginla, making sure a year in advance their best player doesn’t skate freely into unrestricted free agency.
Thornton will receive a $600,000-perseason bump in pay, which isn’t all that much considering how much he would have pocketed had he shopped himself in the open market. He’ll make $7.2 million per season over the final three years, terrific for the Sharks because he could have received $8 million, maybe $9 million.
Iginla? He figured he was already getting a fair shake, so he was prepared to take little or no raise to stick around. He’s giving the Flames a break, really, because they’ve treated him properly by simply addressing his situation. It was a show of faith. Iginla returned the favor with a show of loyalty. See how it works?
For some reason, such as arrogance, the Buffalo Sabres figured they could get away with trying to muscle co-captains Chris Drury and Daniel Briere when, in fact, General Manager Darcy Regier and owner Tom Golisano didn’t have an ounce of leverage. Apparently, they thought they were smarter than legions of people who have wailed all season to get something done. Boy, they really taught Drury and Briere a lesson, didn’t they?
Briere signed an eye-popping eight-year deal worth $52 million with Philadelphia. It’s exactly three years and $27 million more than he would have accepted from the Sabres, had they tended to their business back in January. Yep, the cerebral Sabres could have had him for $25 million over five years.
Drury landed a five-year deal worth $35.25 million with the New York Rangers, who realized they would have beaten the Sabres last season with Captain Clutch in their lineup. So when you break it down, Briere will average $6.5 million per season while Drury will get just more than $7 million per year.
Add it up, $13.5 million per year, give or take a few bucks. It’s about what the Sabres should have expected.
One more time: Drury and Briere would have stayed in Buffalo for less money than their market value had the Sabres shown genuine interest. The Sabres’ gross miscalculation concerning this situation will cost them plenty of fans, which translates to plenty of money. It’s bad business.
It doesn’t matter that Philly overpaid for Briere. What matters is the Sabres could have kept their leading scorer without overpaying him. Instead, they did next to nothing, which was simply mindboggling.
The Rangers are legitimate contenders with Drury and Scott Gomez being added to a good lineup that already had Jaromir Jagr. The Rangers found a way to give three players more than $22 million next season. We’ll see if it works, but at least they made the effort to get better.
Buffalo is left with trying to clean up its own mess, which likely will mean spending more than necessary on other players. Trust me, the price for Thomas Vanek just increased because he’s more valuable to the Sabres than ever. We’ll see if another team, such as the Montreal Canadiens, throws a pile of money on Vanek’s lap and forces Buffalo to match.
It’s safe to assume a proud hockey town feels like it was kicked in the stomach by the very team it supported, not the leaders who departed. Good thing the Sabres kept coach Lindy Ruff, at least for now.
Let’s just call the Sabres’ situation what it is, the biggest personnel blunder in the history of the franchise. The Ottawa Senators fired John Muckler after he helped them reach the Stanley Cup finals because he didn’t do enough at the trade deadline. The Sabres gave Regier a contract extension for doing nothing since the deadline.
Here I was last summer praising Regier for locking up his younger players. It actually looked like the guy finally understood the importance of keeping good people. Come to find out, his real genius is keeping his job. How it has continued for a decade and counting is one of the true sports mysteries. He should have been fired years ago. What, Bob Clarke wasn’t available?
Regier has alienated scouts, players, front-office types and fans for years and still came away relatively unscathed. Golisano deserves his share of criticism for Drury and Briere cruising into free agency. So does managing partner Larry Quinn, who should have been astute enough to comprehend the situation and strong enough to fix it. 
A little lesson in NHL economics, boys, without trying to insult your intelligence: The money flows from the ticket-buying public to the owner to the players, not from the owner to the players to the fans. You would think Golisano would know more than anyone, but apparently the man who founded Paychex doesn’t like signing them.
His conversation with Regier last summer should have lasted about five seconds.
Golisano: Darcy, it’s Tom, your boss. Yeah, get Chris and Danny signed to contract extensions before they slip away.
Regier: Well, Tom, our policy is that we don’t usually sign players in the last year of . . .
Golisano: Darcy, you’re fired. Click.
The message San Jose and Calgary sent to their players and fans was they were committed to keeping them. The message Thornton and Iginla sent to management was they wouldn’t demand the last dollar. The message 
all involved sent to other players was San Jose and Calgary are quality organizations.
The Flyers and Rangers sent the message they’re playing for keeps. And the message the Sabres have sent since last summer was confirmed over the weekend. They’re not serious about winning the Stanley Cup. Just look at the way they do business and the players they have pushed away.
Now that Drury and Briere are gone, perhaps Regier and Golisano will get the message, too.
1 comment:
Experts Weigh In On Captains' Departures
Nick Mendola - Monday, July 2, 2007 - 11:16 AM
(WGR 550) - As Western New York reeled from the losses of co-captains of Chris Drury and Daniel Briere to New York and Philadelphia Flyers, respectively, The Howard Simon Show welcomed guests from nationwide in an extended show to try and make sense of the new Sabres landscape.
ESPN's John Buccigross was one the first to broach the topic, and said he was a little surprised to see Drury end up in New York, but that his signing makes sense.
"For a kid who grew up fifteen minutes from New York City, obviously we knew Don Mattingly was his boyhood hero, just a lot of people here who have that Knicks, Giant, Ranger, Yankee passion," Buccigross told Howard Simon and Jeremy White.
"I was a bit surprised certainly after buying a house out in Manhattan Beach, Calif., you kinda thought it would maybe be L.A., but maybe after one year out there, he realized he was an East Coast guy. Five year contract, you thought he could've got 7 or 8, but I think the lure of New York City, and raising a Cup in New York City like Mark Messier and what that can do for you, I think that was a pretty good lure."
Tim Panaccio of the Philadelphia Inquirer joined Howard and Jeremy as well, and said Briere may not be as good a fit for the Flyers, as Drury is for the Rangers.
"The reaction's been fairly positive so far," Panaccio said. "You look at the Sabres and the Flyers, and they are two very, very different teams in how they attack, and I just felt that Danny Briere is very, very used to an on-the-go offensive team that allows the goaltender to the do the grunt work, and the Flyers are very defensive-oriented team that creates offense off turn-overs."
Panaccio said Briere leaving Buffalo does not bode well for the Sabres on a few different levels.
"He was very, very unhappy that Darcy Regier didn't make him an offer until three days before free agency," Panaccio said. "A Buffalo reporter said to him, 'You said you wanted to go to Philadelphia because they're a winner, well, Buffalo wins,' and (Briere) came back to it and said, 'I'm talking about a commitment to winning,' and he means long-term. He wanted more years to stay in Buffalo."
Buccigross said that the losses will look better down the line.
"These guys are both over 30 and certainly in 3,4,5 or five years they'll be in the mid-thirties, and they're both smaller players," he said. "So, you say, we could use this money elsewhere in the future. We're still a very good team with a great goalie and a good set of 'D.' The age drops every year. We're going to start having 26- and 27-year old guys who are free agents, and those are the guys you're going to really want to give the money to."
Adam Mair joined Howard and Jeremy, and supplied a Sabres' perspective to the days events.
"Like everyone else, I was sitting around hoping to hear that (Drury and Briere) would be back," Mair said. "You look at Danny and eight years is a really long time and that contract is so front-loaded. With Chris, I just think that he's got an opportunity to go to the Rangers and play for a team that he really grew up loving, and they were able to get Scott Gomez there as well. You just hope that Darcy continues to go out and make good moves like he did bringing those two guys in."
Mair said he's confident that the departures of Briere and Drury won't hurt the team too much.
"I think hockey players to a certain extent are opportunistic, and you'll have guys like Tim Connolly or Derek Roy or Thomas Vanek eat up the ice time that's left over from those two guys," Mair said. "Tim Connolly's... gonna move up and be a 1-2 center, and Derek Roy at about a point a game is going to slide in be your No. 2 guy."
WGR stayed local until Noon, with Nick Mendola welcoming guests Brian Engblom, Scott Burnside and Martin Biron to talk free agency and the Sabres.
The Rangers now have three players making seven-plus million dollars a year in Drury, Jaromir Jagr and Scott Gomez. Burnside said cap issues have become "the great tightrope act" that a team has to walk if they want to spend.
"You look at the Philadelphia Flyers who are committed to Daniel Briere for eight years," Burnside said. "Danny Briere's a fine hockey player, but eight years is frankly a lifetime in hockey and now to be committed to paying him on average $6.5 million every year for eight years, what does that do to the development of young players?"
With Derian Hatcher, Kimmo Timonen, Scott Gomez, Jason Smith, Simon Gagne and Briere, the Flyers now have a veritable stable of leaders, and Biron said in addition to welcoming Briere, he likes what the new additions and old guard bring to Philadelphia's 2008 chances.
"I look at the Flyers as a team that has a lot of good, young talent," Biron told Mendola. "Jeff Carter, Mike Richards and R.J. Umberger, and they went into the lock-out year and won the Calder Cup with the Philadelphia Phantoms... gotten a chance to play and win."
"Now you support that group with veteran leadership like I've never seen before. You got the possibility of five captains. That's just amazing, and it's gonna make a big difference. You've got other guys on the team that could be considered captain in Mike Knuble and Sami Kapanen. What I've heard about the new guys, the chemistry will just keep going up."
Biron said he didn't get too much of a chance to sway Briere into Philadelphia.
"We were working out together, so we kinda just made light of it," Biron said. "I was telling him how we really enjoyed being there the last month of the season and there's the same hockey-fanatic-crazy kind of feeling as there was (in Buffalo), because he went from Phoenix to Buffalo, and Phoenix didn't know much about the Coyotes, and (he got to Buffalo) and really enjoyed the environment. The environment in Philadelphia is the same way."
Each of the above interviews is available in its entirety in our Audio Vault on WGR550.
Post a Comment