There is a grey area in our eligibility criteria for CHLers, which has lead to some confusion re players like Samson. We state the player needs to have a birthday of '87 or earlier, yet also has to be 20 years old, when in fact there are 19 year olds right now who have passed through two drafts and were in fact born in '87. Maybe Drew, Douglas or Matt can comment on what the specifics should be.
What's interesting to me is teams are willing to pay $2MM to $4MM for players rated between 71 and 75 because they have some past name recognition, but there are several players rated 69 - 71 who didn't receive an offer much above the league minimum, at least a bonafide non-conditional one. An interesting development.
Perhaps the best value out there were the Belfour and CuJo signings. Between 1.2 and $1.4 million for guys who have very solid ratings and can still do a credible job as a 1A back-up seems to me as pretty good value, although I guess not too many teams are thinking they'll win the cup with those guys.
To me, the middle of the pack guys got overpaid this year, but that might just be due to the fact there were less elite level allstars to be had. Supply and demand basically, as teams with a top line void had to reset their sites on the Straka's and Murray's, let alone the Satan's and Carter's (none of whom are 80 rated or higher, I might add).
In terms of revenue generation, what we are seeing is the bi-product of the revenue bail-out the league did. Several GM's voiced how unfair it was to have no extra revenue coming in because they had mismanaged their team in past (despite the fact they don't have near the expenses regular teams have) and now most have simply turned around and spent the extra money in line with the higher cap. To be honest, I don't think many teams are thinking about profit and loss at this time of year, but rather where they are with respect to the cap (versus setting their own). Unless the guy is well over 80 rated, you can't anticipate he's going to generate the revenue back you spend on him, so teams better have the bank balance to withstand some losses. Buyer beware, as in past years.