Thursday Morning Cupcheck - The Annual Spending of the Morons

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we dove deep into the dark depths of the dastardly deal the Stars made to acquire one Sean Avery. This week, I was planning on performing my one-man Jean Paul Sartre-inspired performance piece, 'No Goal' --an nightmarishly existential glance inside hockey hell-- but recent events in el mundo de hockey have once again forced me to write about something that's actually relevant. Of course, I'm talking about the Annual Spending of the Morons, the Early July Free Agent Frenzy that grips desperate hockey fans by the co-jones and rips them off painfully, mercilessly, and with a huge blood-soaked mess afterwards.

This year's Spending of the Morons was no different from any year, except in one small detail: that it was about 400 times as insanely idiotic. A huge number of teams signed marginal players to their marginal teams in hopes of...what, exactly, I'm not sure. Will Ron Hainsey score an occasional goal in Atlanta? Is Owen Nolan really worth nearly $3 million a year at age 36? Will Jaromir Jagr finally bring the Stanley Cup to the snakebitten city of Omsk? Only time --or a well-received educated guess using the most obvious of possible answers-- will tell.

As it says in The Good Book, 'judge not lest ye be judged': then again, it also says something about not getting a delicious milkshake to go with that bacon cheeseburger (don't forget the menstruating pig sauce on the side), so let's get some serious free agent judging in before they update the Bible to include hockey signings.

It's nigh-impossible to accurately grade a free agent signing before the player has had the chance to skate a single shift with his new team. However, with the Power of the Sweeping Generalization, the nigh-impossible quickly becomes the childishly-easy, and we are able to forge boldly ahead with our ill-informed hockey analysis. Since comparing salaries is a tricky business, I've decided to break each major free agent signing into three categories: the signing itself, a comparable signing on the Stars' roster, and who won.

Calgary Flames sign Todd Bertuzzi for one year, $1.95 million: Does Calgary's sense of charity and goodwill towards their downtrodden brothers know no bounds? Bertuzzi --who used to be wildly entertaining-- is now the equivalent of the Angel of Sorrow on the ice, as even his visage makes jacked-up young male hockey fans depressed and causes large, hairy men to weep uncontrollably. Seeing Bertuzzi take a shift is like going to the circus and watching a clown slowly commit suicide in the center ring.

Comparable Stars signing: B.J. Crombeen, one year, $550,000. Crombeen is a younger, faster, and lankier version of what Bertuzzi once was. The kid can hit, skate, and take dumb penalties like the best of 'em.

Winner: Dallas Stars. At 1/4 the cost and 4x the production, Crombeen is the clearly superior choice. An added bonus: Crombeen's better looking....ladies.

Pittsburgh Penguins sign Brooks Orpik for 6 years, $3.75 million/season: The Pens got to keep their hard-hitting defenseman, an especially deft move considering most of the rats that jumped the Penguins' ship after that embarrassing loss to the Wings. Maybe all those guys don't feel as confident about Crosby as the NHL's marketing department?

Comparable Stars signing: B.J. Crombeen, one year, $550,000. You want to pay big bucks for a guy who hits hard? Try this one on for size: how about paying that same forward-flattener near the league minimum instead! Paying someone to take up four or five cubic feet of space on a rink is one thing, but as anyone who is playing against Annti Miettinen knows, highlight-reel checks are extremely easy to come by.

Winner: Dallas Stars. Here's a fun-filled activity: after you're done reading this column, head over to Neiman Marcus, find the richest person you can and try and convince them to risk life and limb by slamming into a wall. What's that? Can't be done? Then try finding some dirt-poor pauper making less than $560,000 and convince him of the same thing. Piece of cake, right? Point: Stars.

Atlanta Thrashers sign Ron Hainsey for 5 years, $4.5 million/season: Stars fans may remember Ron Hainsey as that guy who scored that one goal that one time, and then promptly avoided scoring in every game ever since. He's big, and fast, never takes penalties for any reason whatsoever, and should be a great fit with a Thrashers team known league-wide as a bunch of Southern Softies.

Comparable Stars signing: B.J. Crombeen, one year, $550,000: As we all know, statistics are immutable beacons of truth, hewn from the living rock and solid arbiters of any sports-related argument. And the stats in this one truly do not lie: while Hainsey scored an impressive 32 points in 78 games, his points-per-game just plain suck compared to Crombeen, who glided Gretzky-like through the league with his two assists in eight games. And I'm not even going to mention which player was -7 and which was +1.

Winner: Dallas Stars. Hainsey's .41 points/game clip, applied retroactively to Crombeen's contract, justifies a signing of no more than around $800,000 a year for 1.3 years. My prediction? In three years, Atlanta's front office will look longingly at Crombeen and wonder what could have been.

Finally, Detroit Red Wings sign Marian Hossa for one year, $7.4 million: Hossa could've signed with another team for significantly more, but deciding instead to follow up his pathetic Finals performance with a classy European Dick Move, dissed the Penguinos as a team that could not in a million years beat a team like the Red Wings. Of course, he's right, but that's besides the point.

Comparable Stars signing: B.J. Crombeen, one year, $550,000. The contracts are almost mirror images of each other: both are one-year deals, for high-flying forwards who put up relatively similar numbers in the Cup Finals.

Winner: Dallas Stars. What sort of moron goes to Hertz and rents the most expensive vehicle he can find for one day? Better to rent the Geo at 1/13th the price, and keep it for two weeks. If there's one cardinal rule in hockey, it's that you never throw megabucks at a former Ottawa Senator. Perhaps Wings GM Ken Holland can sign Alexei Yashin and Ray Emery for a combined $15 million a season? Same deal. The Stars firmly beat the Wings on this one.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck. Tune in next week when I write the next installment of my popular feature piece "Which Race is Better?". Next up: Swedes or Finns? The answer, a Gold Medal and four Stanley Cups in 11 years may surprise you!