it works like this, folks. you're going to take swings and you're going to miss. that's the nature of the business. the lesson here for dundon is that most of the time, if a player is sitting without a contract as deep into the process as gardiner was, there's a reason for it. when up front money is of no interest to them, only term, there's a reason for it. if you can read the tea leaves in those situations you can infer what the player is saying to you by his contract demands. he knew his game was deteriorating at a level that doesn't bode well for his chances of being productive through the life of that contract. when the player himself believes that, you're a fool to give it to him. we all hoped for a different outcome in our desperate need for the player that he was previously, but these types of russian roulette signings sometimes hit the wrong cylinder. carolina isn't alone in that. just take a look at the list of unrestricted free agent signings from the last 10 years and try to find a team that hasn't done this. it's part of spending to the cap to give out speculative contracts and hope for the best. we're just the ones that got left holding the bag this time.
as negative as this sounds, i don't believe it's even remotely close to "over" for gardiner here. we just need to proceed with some different expectations. we have to forget his salary and evaluate him against the expectations of a replacement level player. if over time, we get enough out of him to survive on our third pairing and maybe have some bright spots every now and again, that's the best you can hope for at this point. it's likely at some point there will be talk of buying that contract out or trying to move it, but until such a time arrives the best we can do is support his play and try not to focus too extensively on what he can't do anymore and try to resign ourselves to what he can. he's not a bad person because he took the contract and he's not physically able to be the impact player he once was. he's still trying to be that guy and that might be part of his problem too. he needs to simplify, rebuild his game, and take care of his own zone as a matter of priority. his turnover last night was in attempt to do too much. that needs to leave his game at this stage of his career. he's going to lose a lot more of those than he wins now that his body has betrayed him.