In this Nov. 12, 2015, file photo, Boston Bruins left wing Loui Eriksson (21) skates during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Boston. Steven Stamkos isn't the only "big fish" available when NHL free agency opens Friday at noon. The top-tier talent is deeper than in many recent years with Milan Lucic, Loui Eriksson, Brian Campbell and others available.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press
So much for the NHL's purported cash crunch.
Less than two hours after the league's free-agent season opened for business, the 30 teams had collectively committed more than half a billion dollars in contracts to their new player recruits.
It was a crazy, expensive, tumultuous day, when the NHL landscape shifted again, especially out in Western Canada, where all three teams – the Edmonton Oilers, the Vancouver Canucks and the Calgary Flames – landed their key targeted players.
The Oilers outbid the Montreal Canadiens for Milan Lucic, a charming, outgoing personality off the ice who transforms into a mean and nasty player on the ice, someone who will provide the necessary space for Connor McDavid and the rest of the Oilers kids to thrive.
Loui Eriksson will get a chance to play with his countrymen, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, in Vancouver for a Canucks' team that is trying to stem its descent, even as its core players are aging. Eriksson might not be enough to turn around the Canucks' fortunes by himself, but his versatile all-round game would make better any team he plays on.
As for the Flames, they too believed that adding a player with Troy Brouwer's pedigree would enhance the development of their young nucleus. Brouwer is sort of a poor-man's Lucic, prized for his leadership, someone who was a key element in the St. Louis Blues' run to the Stanley Cup semi-finals.
In Calgary, he'll get to play with former teammate Brian Elliott, added to the Flames' team at the entry draft to stabilize their weakest link last season, which occurred in goal. The addition of Chad Johnson, who most recently played with the Buffalo Sabres, means Calgary will have an entirely new goaltending tandem next year to coincide with a brand new head coach, Glen Gulutzan.
On paper, all three teams are demonstrably better in the here and now than they were 24 hours before. The larger question is will any of the contracts make financial sense down the road, once the early years click off?
Many of the more prominent free agents to change teams Friday – David Backes going to Boston, Kyle Okposo to Buffalo, Andrew Ladd signing with the New York Islanders – will all get big chunks of their compensation in signing bonuses, which not only makes those contracts harder to buy out, it means they'll get paid the vast majority of their money, even if there's another lockout in 2020.
Those are the sorts of commitments that can backfire on teams in a meaningful way. Most, naturally, were willing to roll the dice, on the grounds that the only thing that really matters is the race to get competitive in the present.
In some ways, the opening day of free agency was like a giant game of musical chairs. The Islanders lost Okposo and Frans Nielsen (to the Detroit Red Wings), so they replaced them with Ladd and Jason Chimera. The Blues lost Backes and Brouwer, so they replaced them with David Perron, who they originally drafted in 2007. The cash-strapped Anaheim Ducks lost three players – Perron, Jamie McGinn to the Arizona Coyotes and Chris Stewart to the Minnesota Wild, preferring to save their dollars to sign their own restricted free agents.
It was a strategy adopted by both Florida and Tampa, which signed their cornerstone young defencemen, Aaron Ekblad and Victor Hedman, respectively, to massive eight-year extensions that will make them among the highest-paid defencemen in the league when their new deals kick in.
Tampa's financial commitment to Hedman, combined with Steven Stamkos's contract extension, plus a new deal for goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, means that Lightning starter Ben Bishop will almost certainly be on the move between now and next summer. Dallas is the favoured destination, after the Stars filled one of their many defensive holes by signing ex-Canuck Dan Hamhuis to a new deal.
No single player took a bigger year-over-year pay cut than Eric Staal, who had his contract sliced from $8.3-million per season to $3.5-million. He joined the Wild, after dividing his time between New York Rangers and the Carolina Hurricanes last season. Lee Stempniak, in bidding to become the first player to play for all 30 NHL teams, joined his 10th, Carolina.
There was a lot of that sort of toing and froing, in which the best that could be said for the teams is that they shuffled their personnel sideways; not getting any better and hoping they didn't get too much worse. As for all the silly dollars they spent, at some point down the road, when their buyers' remorse surely kicks in, it'll likely be someone else's problem to deal with anyway.