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Is Jeff Finger's contract the oddest one in NHL history?

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Victoire HuGo

Victoire HuGo

Justin make me proud
Mar 12, 2008
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I'm going through old AHL teams for a personal project and I just came accross Finger's name. For those who barely remember Jeff Finger, he was a bottom pairing defenseman with 94 career NHL games under his belt who was signed to a four year deal worth 14M by the Leafs. Legend has it that Cliff Fletcher confused Kurt Sauer and Finger who both played for the Avalanche that season.


So my question is, is Jeff Finger the weirdest signing that ever went down on July 1st?
 
I'd say yes. It became a running gag between me and my friends. It was a terrible signing the day it happened and it's just exactly what I expected in retrospect.
 
It's up there in the sheer WTF factor. I literally had to check who he was when he signed that deal. He was a healthy scratch every time I watched the Avs play, which admittedly wasn't all that often.
 
That's certainly the craziest I remember, at least in the cap era when it actually mattered.
 
Also, this signing happened in 2008 when the salary floor and cap were $34.3M and $50.3M respectively. $14M/4yr was a real commitment.

At $3.5M a year, Finger was taking up 10.2% of the floor and 7% of the cap. Converting that to today's numbers, that makes his contract equivalent to $20M/4yr... comparable to what the Sharks gave Paul Martin last summer.

Yeah, it was a really weird decision. I can't think of a harder signing to explain.
 
Big McLargehuge said:
It's up there in the sheer WTF factor. I literally had to check who he was when he signed that deal. He was a healthy scratch every time I watched the Avs play, which admittedly wasn't all that often.
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He was a top-4 defender for Colorado the year before the signing. It wasn't *THAT* weird, aside from the backstory that Fletcher might have signed the wrong player.

Really not that different from the Mark Fayne contract in Edmonton, although Fayne has turned out a bit better.
 
MS said:
He was a top-4 defender for Colorado the year before the signing. It wasn't *THAT* weird, aside from the backstory that Fletcher might have signed the wrong player.

Really not that different from the Mark Fayne contract in Edmonton, although Fayne has turned out a bit better.
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I don't know about that one... Fayne had a lot more going for him and no one really got caught by surprised with that one (especially compared to the one Nikitin got). Sure in hindsight, you can argue that Greene made Fayne look better than he really is but he was still a serviceable defenseman who could eat minutes.

Based on this old article (http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=16043), a lot of the stuff that the Leafs management raved about concerning Finger wasn't accurate at all.
 
It is the worst contract ever, considering they signed the wrong guy.

How does that even happen in the NHL?
 
Was blown away with that contract. I honestly don't even remember hearing his name prior to that signing. Fletcher had lost his mind at that point, it was baffling that they decided to bring him back. Well, maybe not that baffling considering Richard Peddie, the boy genius himself, brought him in with a puppet show and everything.
 
Ilya Kovalchuk's contract was a very odd one.
 
I recall that they had just unloaded a bad contract (maybe McCabe) and then immediately picked up Finger.
 
MS said:
He was a top-4 defender for Colorado the year before the signing. It wasn't *THAT* weird, aside from the backstory that Fletcher might have signed the wrong player.

Really not that different from the Mark Fayne contract in Edmonton, although Fayne has turned out a bit better.
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Uh Fayne played on the top pairing in NJ.
 
Sarcastic said:
Is there a reason for the Jovanovski one out of curiosity? Also, the Coyotes contract or the Panthers one? I don't think either was too strange albeit overpaid.
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Was referring to the Panthers one. Four years @ 4.125M a year when it was a 35+ contract just seemed like a... odd decision. It seemed like they were trying too much to get a veteran to give the C to. They ended up getting it right when they Mitchell a few years later but it just seemed like a out of the blue signing considering the money involved and the term.
 
MS said:
He was a top-4 defender for Colorado the year before the signing. It wasn't *THAT* weird, aside from the backstory that Fletcher might have signed the wrong player.

Really not that different from the Mark Fayne contract in Edmonton, although Fayne has turned out a bit better.
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He may have been a top 4 at times during the regular season, but he was also healthy scratched regularly in the playoffs, which is about the only time I watched the Avs that year.

Fayne was a top pairing defenseman on the Devils. Not a legit top pairing guy, but he was getting big minutes.

Chris Cutter said:
Two other random ones were Ed Jovanovski's and Clayton Stoner's a few years back.
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On sheer value the Jovanovski one was atrocious, but it made a degree of sense for a team trying to reach the cap floor. If he signed that for a team that wasn't trying to reach a cap floor it'd be up there as one of the worst contracts of the cap era, but if Florida was going to overpay someone to reach the floor it may as well be a long-time former Panther they intended on being the veteran leader of the young team. The cap can create some situations like that...Deryk Engelland went from being a #7 in Pittsburgh to getting nearly $9 million from Calgary over 3 years despite being in his 30s.
 
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If you mean oddest, not necessarily bad there is Gretzky’s personal services contract.

When the Oilers entered the NHL, they wanted to put Gretzky back into the draft like they did with the other young players on the WHA teams, but he wasn’t actually under contract with the Oilers at all, instead he had a personal services contract with their owner which the NHL probably couldn’t void like they did the ones with the teams so the Oilers got to keep him and negotiated some minor draft penalties instead.

There were probably other contracts like this, but AFAIK it’s the only time it really mattered.
 
Chris Cutter said:
Yeah but at least there was a little super miniscule tiny chance that he could repeat his 30 goal season. He was a local talent and a one of the top Free Agents that year (lol).
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Even if he accidentally had 30 goals deflect off of him again, he was such a liability because of his skating that he'd still be a net negative on the ice.
 
Finger definitely stands out to me. I think Ron Wilson had a lot to do with it? He apparently thought very highly of Finger when he faced him as San Jose's coach.

But even still, I don't know why they targeted him with such a hyyuuuge cap hit. Like, was there a bidding war for him? If the Leafs hadn't signed him, would he have gone elsewhere for only slightly less? Or did the Leafs just get in a bidding war with nobody for someone nobody else was very interested in? Probably the latter.

Clarkson was also another one that everyone knew wasn't going to turn out well, except Leafs management, apparently.
 
I found the Engelland contract Calgary gave was a head scratcher too. He was a 5-6 dman on the pens (Sometimes 7) and got almost 3M a year.
 
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