I guess speaking in empty platitudes or puffing up GMBM is the only way for you to think a comment has value?
No, lots of comments have value. Pointing to something that happens all the time and is 100% typical and talking about it like it's something provocative is pointless. Coveted 29-year-old NHL free agents getting a contract that lasts till 20 minutes after their 35th birthday happens all the time. 100% typical.
A 3rd round pick while we're still holding the bag on 50% of a contract is not real value.
On a deal anyone would have given him at the time. Again, looking at it with the benefit of hindsight is really the only way to reach that conclusion. He gave him the contract anyone would have, given his trajectory. In the first year of that deal, he was our most productive forward in the run to our only Cup. When it turned out the way it did, Mac moved a contract and player we all thought were immovable, ridding us of a problem guy and freeing up 4m in cap space. The only way to avoid this particular issue would have been with a time machine.
Eating seven years of a worse contract is not real value.
Pure prognostication. Might turn out that way, might not. He'll likely be an overpay for us, but that's mitigated mightily by the guy we moved out and the guy he's replacing, at least for the next 3 years. If he gets his form back he's an asset regardless, and tradable if he wants to go. Also the only way to add a player of his potential caliber without giving up any assets. Costs us cap space we have.
Non-issue at the moment. For this particular complaint to be justified,
you would need a time machine...
Having to package up your 26 year-old goalie to unload your $5.5M defenseman is not real value.
Rewriting the history books on this one. We couldn't pay Grubauer and had goalie prospects we liked in the system. We were losing him regardless (many thought he'd be taken in expansion), and Mac clearly had a bigger plan in mind for Orpik. He used Grubauer to skirt the rules and turn a $5.5m player into a $1m player.
That was a good trade, and a set of moves that made the league go, "Hey, wait a minute, not sure you can do that!" And it made us snicker.
So that one's historical fiction. What's next?
Moreover, the structure of this contract makes it very hard to buyout, which also makes it harder to move Roy near the end of the contract
We don't buy out contracts, and look at the deals handed out to coveted players his age. Not just defensemen, every position. And not just this year, every year. They ALL get term, Hive. Every guy in his position lobbies hard for max term. We didn't give it to him, the number is great for the player he is right now, the cap will increase with the potential decline in play you're worried about, and our GM pretty much never gets left "holding the bag," no matter how much you want to spin the past.
Saying this contract is too long is saying MOST free agent contracts are too long. This happens all the time, to every team. That extra year is only "bad" if it bucks the trend of FA contracts in some way. It doesn't. It's absolutely typical, and a contract every pundit out there worth a toss is saying was a big win for the Caps.
Not a great list of examples, also leaves out the many, many times Mac moved aging players for nice returns...
As for Oshie, I was mostly rebuking your ridiculous strawman argument that somehow you're more "sentimental" to our players
Which, as I recall, was me responding to your statement that you'd have moved Oshie years ago, a statement that made clear your dispassionate view of the player that you know is not shared by the team or its fanbase. Pointing to your lack of sentimentality in response to that statement is akin to pointing to a firetruck and saying, "That's red."
Look, I might be a bit of a schmuck on this point. You didn't invent that narrative. We talked about that possibility a lot that year. But we know now that it wasn't what he wanted. I think the team would have exposed him if he
wanted to go. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that definitely feels like the level of respect Mac has for guys that want or need a change. We've seen it before.
So it seems clear to me that Oshie wanted to stay. He said so publicly, though I concede that that might just be what one says under those circumstances. Still, exposing him with the expectation that he'd be taken when he wanted to stay isn't in any way sentimental, hence my willingness to be schmucky.