Did I Miss Something?

Ah yes. On a crazy busy day for myself, the Islanders make headlines (again) for signing Rick Dipietro to a 15-year deal.

Take a ride on Technorati for the latest Dipietro talk and you’ll see most of it is pretty much on the “Wang’s crazy” side of things, but all is not so.

Tom Benjamin, thinks there’s more upside than downside. Then there’s Burnside. ESPN’s Scott Burnside, lays out this prediction:

The Islanders haven’t won a playoff series since 1993, and they’re likely to finish dead last or close to it in the Eastern Conference this season. The organization is rife with dissension and inexperienced people at key positions.

While I respect the fact that management builds a winning team, it’s still the team that has to play the games and out of all the criticisms today and all the “joke of a franchise” lines, I haven’t seen one person give reasons as to how this team is worse than the one iced by the Isles last season. It wasn’t a playoff team, but far from the bottom of the league. Ted Nolan’s had a winning team with front office issues before, I’ll wait until the season starts to see how this all plays out.

Posted by David M Singer on Sep 13, 2006 at 03:19 AM
NHL

Comments

I am yet to see any person write about the time-value of money. Instead, I see comments about "4.5 million until the cows come home." Well not exactly. Against the cap sure, 4.5 million will remain 4.5 million (albeit if the cap raises the contract will take a smaller percentage of cap room, of course the inverse also applies). That being said, the present value of year 15 on the contract is less than 2.2 million. So if the Isles actually put money away, they will be getting DiPietro for the price of a backup goalie at that point. Pretty good deal. That is of course assuming that he actually plays that long.
Posted by JD on 2006-09-14 00:49:56 I think the Islanders are a better all-around team then they were last year at this time. I also think that while Wang is a good businessman, his ideals don't really translate to the game of hockey very well. He mentioned that he wanted to show that he is loyal to his players in signing DiPietro for 15 years. It's one thing to be loyal to business partners but it's not the same when it comes to professional athletes. DiPietro had a pretty good year last season and he's only going to improve as time goes on. It's quite a risky gamble to sign him for that amount of time. Tom Benjamin reveals many good ways as to how the Islanders could get around his contract if they need to make transactions and such.
Posted by John Chandler on 2006-09-13 19:03:29

Next entry: Probert-Style Arrests

Previous entry: And You Complain About Hockey Coverage

<< Back to main

Did I Miss Something?

Comments

Feed

Search

Categories

Most recent entries

Network