I want to get back to the earlier, fascinating discussion of the aging athlete.
There can be little doubt that young players are peaking earlier than ever. "Older" players seem to lose their skills faster. We see this is other sports also: baseball (pitchers over 30 losing velocity, and position players not easily getting contracts last winter), soccer (witness Wayne Rooney's move to MLS last week): I'm not the familiar with basketball and the brutality of football means few players even reach age 30.
But does this mean that we should totally shut ourselves off from players beyond age 28 (it used to be age 30)?
"Older players" can still be productive and valuable. They can still produce, even if it is not at the rate of their "younger days." They might have other intangible and not measurable qualities, to contribute: experience, knowledge, leadership, mentoring.
The question is: how much is reduced production and those other qualities worth? How much, as a team, are you willing to pay for them?
Do you pay for diminishing but still good production at ages 28-30 knowing after that the downward curve might be steep?
It would seem that all teams, whether they are young/rebuilding/retooling, teams scuffling, as well as serious Cup contenders, need some "older," veteran leadership, even if the cost would seem based solely on production, over the top. Maybe we should stop considering how much a player makes (hard to do, maybe impossible, I know, in the cap era) and look at what they contribute. If they once were consistently 30G+30A and are now 20G+20A, isn't that still valuable? If they were once 1st pair D and are now second, or were 2nd and are now 3rd, isn't that valuable?
The "kicker" is that each player is different and there is no science that can show how fast a player will go downhill. Yes, they will go downhill, but how fast? We've seen how fast some of our D, Staal, Girardi, McD can lose it. We've also seem a player like Nash, change is game and contribute is so many other ways, on and off the ice.
Each contract beyond age 28 is a gamble but the league is replete with stories of players will productive and valuable beyond age 30.
To cut ourselves off from veteran players, even with a rebuilding team, would seem to be a mistake and would put us at a competitive disadvantage against other teams ready to sign them. The aging gracefully athlete (I know, I know, Girardi didn't age gracefully) is still an important cog.
If all our young players pan out and mature at the same time and we are a serious Cup contender in 3-4 years, wouldn't we still need older, not as productive players as they once were, to add balance to the team?
I wouldn't enjoy being the fan of a sport (any sport) that spits out players as "old" at age 28?
Anyway, something I've been thinking about as wet talk about adding Cally.
