Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Blowing Your Mind, Salary Cap-Style

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we re-lived the unimaginable horrors of the fourth grade, where our young lives were robotically measured by a system of arbitrary "grades" that had little or no basis in reality. This week, I was planning on dedicating this week's column to my bi-monthly Something Good, Something Bad piece on Gary Bettman (Something Good: the unholy army of cacodemons clandestinely manipulating Bettman have not yet reached the city gates), but due to a flurry of off-season hub-bub, it's time instead for a serious, by-the-numbers look at the Dallas Stars' salary cap condition.

Please, contain your excitement. I keep a jar specifically for containing mine. (And I label it, too....now) (long, relatively unpleasant story)(more on that later).

What's that you say? Salary cap articles are written for and by complete losers. Anyone can pretend to spend someone else's money willy-nilly. True dat, my friends, true dat. But rather than commit the timeless errors of my hockey writing brethren who prance gaily with tens of millions of dollar$ of the owners' money --only to stiff the barista at the Starbucks where they want to be seen writing their unreadable schlock-- I will bravely, boldly and belligerently go where no hockey pundit has yet gone before. It's time to break down that wall between megabucks owner and homeless & unwashed hockey writer; in this column, I will meet Tom Hicks halfway on any and all salary-based suggestions. We will pore over the Stars' cap hits, free agents and, like a cow in a phone booth, chip in where we can.

Currently, according to the ever-amazing Andrew's Stars Page (subscription required, but well worth it), the Stars are sitting comfortably at $47.5 million in salaries, with 17 players under contract. This includes everyone from the high-falutin' Brad Richards ($7.8 mil) all the way to lowly Toby Petersen ($550,000).

Among the players signed: 9 forwards (Richards, Ribeiro, Morrow, Lehtinen, Modano, Ott, Lundqvist, Barch and Petersen), 7 defensemen (Zubov, Boucher, Daley, Robidas, Grossman, Niskanen and Fistric) and one goalfensman (Turco). If you throw in likely roster players Fabian Brunnstrom and backup goalie Tobias Stephan, that ups the payroll to around $50 million with just 3-5 forward spots open.

Note the players conspicuously missing from the above list: Niklas Hagman, Annti Miettinen, Stu Barnes, Brad Winchester (who's been conspicuously missing all his life) and, most importantly, Loui Eriksson. Eriksson is a restricted free agent --thank Jarl, the Frost Giant God of Northern Sweden-- but everyone else is unrestricted and can sign anywhere they please.

The Stars went far with this bunch, and with an off-season under their belts to properly work Richards into the offense (not to mention possibly getting Zubov and Lehtinen back from injury-plagued seasons), it'd be nice to keep this group together. But at what cost?

The Stars' first priority ought to be re-signing Loui Eriksson. Long ridiculed by impatient Stars fans and former GMs alike, last year Eriksson gradually went from unwatchable, to serviceable, to temporarily amazing, back to serviceable, to Hagman-esque, to Lehtinen-esque, and finally to Gusty Playoff Performer, the highest possible rank for a young Euro. What should the Stars sign the kid for? I propose Hicks meets me halfway: Stars pay $1.5-2 million/year, and I'll match it with my treasured IKEA Klippan loveseat. Added bonus: while dollars only come in green, the Klippan has a wide and exciting array of different colored covers at a reasonable price.

Added bonus #2: if Loui signs for less than $1.5, I'll haul the couch to his place in my pickup truck, El Hombre Negro, myself. I'll get my longtime buddy and Swedish golfing champion Mats Sundin to help bring it up the stairs.

Next up: Niklas Hagman. At one point he was the bee's polveke, or bee's knees, scoring at a pace that would make Gretzky sit up and take notice if he wasn't so busy whining to the refs. I even wrote a Christmas poem in his honor, and the hockey world seemed about ready to crack open and swallow all non-Hagman-havin' teams in late February when he scored a hat trick off Richards' five-assist night.

Then.... nothing happened. He disappeared from the score sheet completely like a henki in the ehtoo, showing up for one crucial game against San Jose but providing little other than the occasional close-but-no-sikari moment. Despite Hagman's uncharacteristic disappearing act, his 27 goals in the regular season --despite not seeing much time on the powerplay-- and his always-entertaining short-handed play were well worth the price of admission.

Here's my take: Hicks ponies up $2 million a season, and I'll pony up my treasured IKEA 2-in-1 floorlamp. Lighting the lamp has never been a problem for me, and with just a single, obvious on/off switch in plain view, even Hagman should be able to figure it out. If he starts scoring goals like he did early on in the season, I'll even throw in my prized IKEA table lamp that looks like a palantir.

Annti Miettinen is yet another Finnish soap opera star in the making: the onetime defensive checking forward turned into a defensive liability early on, before becoming an integral part of our dominating first line for about two weeks. Plucked off that line, he would occasionally show up here and there, but took massive steps backwards late in the season and especially during the playoffs. At some point in each series, opposing defensemen wowed the clueless hacks announcing for Versus with their physical edge by catching Annti in open-ice checks: little did those announcers know, but catching Miettinen with his head down in the neutral zone is about as difficult as catching syphilis in a Bangkok elementary school. Seeing the player regress over the course of the season, collecting a fair amount of his points and plus/minus in a single two-week span.. what's the average hockey owner to think?

My informed opinion: Hicks offers the Finnish Flush no more than $1 million, one year, while I'll sweeten the deal with the same shit I just tried to pawn off on Hagman. I figure with all those massive bodychecks Annti suffered through, he's seeing plenty of lights buzzing around his head as it is: a well-placed floor lamp couldn't hurt.

Finally, what to do with Stu? Barnes had an incredible 2007-08 campaign, anchoring one of the league's top penalty kills (which was missing its top two d-men), providing a shutdown checking-line center/wing, and ably filling the critical Steve Buechele Role for adoring fans. Unfortunately, Barnes is getting up there in years, and his injury probably directly contributed to the Stars' pathetic showing against the hated Red Things. With retirement looming, what's a fair market price for the crafty veteran?

Listen up, ye owners: Tom Hicks ought to offer Stu one more go-around at $1.2 million for one final year, while I'll provide what Stu really needs with my life-size cardboard cutout of Kevin Garnett with a 'Got Milk?' moustache. Like Garnett, Barnes has seen his share of NBA superstardom, but has no rings to show for it. Unlike Garnett, however, he's not stuck with a bunch of gutless stiffs like Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, and next year's Stars team might be the best shot he's ever had at having his name inscribed on the Cup. $1.2 million and a huge 6'11" cardboard monstrosity I can't find any room for should do just the trick.

Well, that's it for this week's always-informative Cupcheck. Tune in next week when I respond to hundreds of angry emails demanding to know why I left B.J. Crombeen off this list. The answer may surprise you.

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