Hockey has a new world order – it involves salary maximums merged with talent.
Some GMs – like Bob Gainey – haven’t really figured it out yet.
Others such as Ken Holland, Mike Gillis and Doug Wilson have.
The Detroit GM articulates the new world order below:
*****
“People want to know, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?’” said Ken Holland, in an interview. “Well, we’re just trying to keep our own players. Zetterberg went from a $2.6-million cap hit to a $6.1-million number and Franzen went from $900,000 to $4-million.
“But we believe they’re core players, star players, players we want to build around, so we spent our money on our own players. If you’re a cap team, it’s a race to $40-million. You need to be between $40- and $45-million for eight to 12 players. Then you fill it out the best you can.”
“The days that you go into free agency every year are over,” said Holland. “We were a big-market team, a big-revenue team and coming out of the work stoppage we signed a lot of guys who were looking for work – Chris Osgood and Dan Cleary and Mikael Samuelsson and Andres Lilja. A year after, we brought in Dominik Hasek, a year after that, Dallas Drake.
“You were just trying to find guys who fit in. For us, this year, those spots are being filled by kids. I don’t think we’re going to score as much. Obviously, we’ve lost 60 goals out of Hossa and Samuelsson. With (Ville) Leino on the team, we’re hoping to get a few of those back and maybe Cleary and (Valterri) Filppula will chip in a few more. We’ve got to be better defensively.
“I don’t think it’s goals-scored that’s so important, it’s the differential between goals for and against. We scored 50 more goals for than against. We’re not going to be there again; but you need to be 30 plus – more goals than goals against – to be a playoff team.”
“It’s becoming more and more obvious all the time, the importance of drafting and developing and moving kids on to your team – because they play cheap,” said Holland. “If you want to have a team with high-end, high-salaried players, they’ve got to be surrounded by players making less than $1-million. It’s simple math.
“We know in the summer of 2010, if we keep our team together, we’ve got $12-million coming off the cap. Every summer, you get to free agency and you assess your commitments and you assess your space.
“Some years, you’re in a position, where you can be active in the market. Some years, you sit on the sidelines and it is somebody else’s turn.”
*****
The above is from an Eric Duhatschek article in the Globe and Mail, which quotes from a Ken Holland interview.
