Agreed that Clowe was the Clarkson replacement. I do believe that Ryder was signed after Lou knew (or strongly believed) that Kovalchuk was leaving ... and then Jagr was added after it was official. I tend to agree with Jim that this team was not going to be anywhere near the cap while paying Kovalchuk about $4.4 million OVER his cap it. Now (as Jim has noted), they have Jagr, Olesz, and Ryder for LESS actual $$$ than they would have paid Kovalchuk.
So ... I think what Jim is saying is that are the Devils better after the "trade" of Kovalchuk for Olesz, Jagr, and Ryder? If they want to spend more, they can kick Jagr's bonus to next year and have at least as much cap space to add another player, as well.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Olesz is a $1 million third/fourth line/healthy scratch player, he's neither here nor there when it comes to 'replacing Kovalchuk', he's replacing Poni/Butler/our other dreck. Jagr I agree was a post-17 move and not just cause of timing but because the groundwork was starting to be laid before that, plus he's got the name recognition. Clowe was the Clarkson replacement as Lou himself all but admitted.
So it really comes down to Ryder. And imo there's no way Lou wasn't at least getting Ryder and keeping Clarkson/getting Clowe with our scoring woes what they were last year and not being able to replace Parise with what was left out there last offseason (Semin and a whole bunch of nothing). Again people want to overlook we lost 50 goals last offseason - Parise and Sykora, and another 20+ this offseason with Clarkson. It was going to take 'multiple' moves just to even come close to what this team was two years ago, with or without 17.
Our total salary is going to be around $58 million or so with a signed Henrique. It would have been $65.3 with Kovalchuk and no Jagr. Last year it was about $64 million or whatever prorated and that's with the first 'big year' of Kovalchuk, not that big a difference overall - and before anyone comes back with it's prorated, well so were our revenues. We lost revenues last year too in the short season. Payroll would have been even higher if Parise had taken our supposedly 'competitive' offer but be that as it may if they were even making Parise a token offer before the lockout, they were at least willing to go to the level the payroll would have been this year with Kovalchuk and the other additions.
Clarkson last year $2.6 million, Clowe this year $4.8
Forward dreck last year (Poni/Butler) around $1 million, Ryder $3.5
Tallinder last year $3.4 million, this year no eighth D-man - about 700k or so gets reallocated to a spare forward
Hedberg last year $1.4 million, Schnieder this year $4 million
Even with Kovalchuk that's only an extra four-five million dollars total spent on the team when they're supposedly on the verge of an ownership change to bring in more money, big whoop. If you think they were still on a firm budget in spite of a imminent ownership change and planned to spend LESS money this offseason on a lesser team just because of 17's extra $4-5 million in salary then by all means people can believe in their conspiracy theories. And most of that difference was spent on the goaltending, which was below average last year - and on status quo or close to it with Clowe/Clarkson. I really don't believe Lou was going to spend nothing to improve the forward core if 17 had stayed.
