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

[KingsFan7824]

Just goes to show, cap or no cap, money can still be spent unwisely.

The Clarkson contract. There has to be some sort of check and/or balance within a management brain trust, right? Even if it's just like one dude in the corner, and his only job is to say "yo, hold up, just for like a second", for any decision being made.

 

[Brewsky]

I was not amused, times are better now tho.

You joined in 2013, I was talking late 2010s, so you missed it and nobody cares.

 

[Finnish your Czech]

I was not amused, times are better now tho.

I enjoy jokes

 

[Satastic]

I only remember him from like NHL 09 where he was on the Avs and I always made a Finger-Foote pairing
I thought I was hilarious

 

[Jacob]

Redden, forgot about that hum-dinger.

That dude went south quickly, and I remember in Ottawa there were rumors of off-ice issues.

 

[Selanne00008]

wow wtf. Where have I been? I never heard about the legend about mixing finger up with Kurt Sauer. Did that 'news' come out long after the signing?

All I remember from finger is having to google his games played, age, etc. when the signing happened. I remember thinking to myself, meh, overpaid move by the Leafs, and went on with my day.

 

[hototogisu]

wow wtf. Where have I been? I never heard about the legend about mixing finger up with Kurt Sauer. Did that 'news' come out long after the signing?

Literally the day after:

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=16043

 

[Satastic]

who did Nonis think Clarkson was?

The second coming of Wendel Clark

 

[TheTotalPackage]

Finger, Clarkson, Lapointe, DiPietro...all those deal were head scratchers.

But the Kovalchuk deal was the oddest. Lamoriello runs a tight ship and is the last guy who would ever give a deal like that one out, especially one that circumvents the cap, and he's the one giving $100+ million to Kovalchuk? That had ownership fingerprints all over it. Lamoriello was uncomfortable at the introductory press conference for him.

 

[Nibbler]

Ryan O'Reilly's contract is pretty strange. His base salary every year of the contract is $1,000,000 with huge signing bonuses every season: $10,000,000 this season, $8,000,000 next season, $7,500,000 the following season, then $5,000,000 every year for the remaining seasons.

He gets a nice huge check to start the season I'm guessing, and he also avoids having to pay more into escrow because they only take base salary for escrow.

 

[joestevens29]

That and Redden's was a stunner from NY.

I remember an interview on local radio. Redden was saying how he got offered more money over more years from the Rags then while finalizing they threw in a NMC

 

[hototogisu]

Ryan O'Reilly's contract is pretty strange. His base salary every year of the contract is $1,000,000 with huge signing bonuses every season: $10,000,000 this season, $8,000,000 next season, $7,500,000 the following season, then $5,000,000 every year for the remaining seasons.

He gets a nice huge check to start the season I'm guessing, and he also avoids having to pay more into escrow because they only take base salary for escrow.

It's another "buyout proof" contract in the style of Clarkson's. And while he does get a big chunk of his money earlier in the form of a bonus, it's not exempt from escrow. That was a rumor that was floating around after he signed the deal but was quickly debunked.

 

[CBJ goalie]

Ryan O'Reilly's contract is pretty strange. His base salary every year of the contract is $1,000,000 with huge signing bonuses every season: $10,000,000 this season, $8,000,000 next season, $7,500,000 the following season, then $5,000,000 every year for the remaining seasons.

He gets a nice huge check to start the season I'm guessing, and he also avoids having to pay more into escrow because they only take base salary for escrow.

Are you sure about this?
I thought a provision was built in to the last CBA that you couldn't front load or back load contracts; that the amount had to be evenly spread out.

 

[AvsGuy]

The second coming of Wendel Clark

In all fairness, there is that Nordic confusion - Clark, Clark's-son... I'm hilarious

 

[hototogisu]

Are you sure about this?
I thought a provision was built in to the last CBA that you couldn't front load or back load contracts; that the amount had to be evenly spread out.

The salary has to be spread out, which it is. O'Reilly gets paid 11m, 9m, 8.5m, 6m, 6m, 6m and 6m each year of the contract, consecutively.

What changes is how he gets his money. Each year he gets 1m in salary, with the rest being paid to him as a signing bonus. So in the first year of the contract he gets paid 10m on July 1, and then 1m over the rest of the year to make up the 11m in salary he is owed.

It still falls within the CBA rules (the salary doesn't drop by more than 50% from any given year to another) but it makes his contract "buyout proof" because a buyout only gives you relief on base salary - in this case, the $1m.

Mirtle gave a rundown on how this makes it "buyout proof" in his article on Clarkson's contract:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...nd-his-buyout-proof-contract/article17783243/

 

[johnny_rudeboy]

Literally the day after:

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=16043

Thanks, a good read.

I actually liked Finger. He was fearless and played with the heart on his sleeve.

But he simply was to expensive to keep around so had to be buried in the AHL.

 

[tfong]

The question is, even if the contract was offered to the wrong player, was Kurt Sauer even worth that amount either?

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

If it's actually true that they signed the wrong guy, i can't to help but laugh my ass off. How does one sign the wrong dude to a 14M contract.

Im just picturing Finger's face when he gets a call from his agent and he's like "you won't believe this"

 

[Flukeshot]

If it's actually true that they signed the wrong guy, i can't to help but laugh my ass off. How does one sign the wrong dude to a 14M contract.

Im just picturing Finger's face when he gets a call from his agent and he's like "you won't believe this"

I remember a radio interview he did after the signing and he admitted to being surprised. The host had to ask Finger to tell him about himself because no one knew who he was. And$3.5m a year was definitely a lot of cap space, but that was when you could bury contracts in the AHL with no cap hit.

 

[LeafFever]

Literally the day after:

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=16043

Notice no legit sources picked it up. It wasn't true.

 

[GarbageGoal]

To this day I still ask about any d-man looking for a big payday...."Is he better than Jeff Finger?"

Never heard the story about Sauer. He wasn't worth that either. They were both AHL shuttle guys.

 

[hototogisu]

The question is, even if the contract was offered to the wrong player, was Kurt Sauer even worth that amount either?

Well that's the main reason why I think it's not true. Sauer himself signed a 4 year deal worth $1.75m per (if I'm not mistaken), considerably less than Finger.

So the theory goes that not only did the Leafs get the wrong guy, but they gave him almost twice the money that he (i.e. Sauer) would have been worth? Funny to think about, but I seriously doubt it. I think they just had too much money to spend and grossly overvalued Finger. For whatever reason.

Notice no legit sources picked it up. It wasn't true.

That's not entirely true. Sportsnet included it in their list of biggest Leafs embarrassments and treated it as fact:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/embarrasing-leafs-moments/

But to me it was always a half-serious theory that people ran with because it was funny to think about and to pile on the Leafs.

Then again, if it were true...would anyone on the Leafs side ever actually admit it?

 

[Cor]

Likely already mentioned, but the belief is that Cliff Fletcher thought he was signing Kurt Sauer, not Jeff Finger.