Anaheim Ducks

Late last night, from the tweets of OC Register’s Eric Stephens:

No deal yet but a well-placed source told me late tonight that a Bobby Ryan signing is “very close.”  Not known when it’ll happen.  Bed time.

Good enough for me — I normally don’t like to pre-report news like this, but Stephens is about a billion times more trustworthy than Larry Brooks, and besides, in a rare moment of BoC preparation, I had already drawn a cartoon for this one.

The lost art of barstool-based negotiation.

Of course I’m thrilled with the promise of a B-Ry signing, almost regardless of what the contract ends up being (I’ll update here when it’s available) — we already know it’ll be a decent price because of the loose $5.325 M “ceiling” set by the Getzlaf/Perry precedents; I guess we’re just waiting on how many years the contract will cover, but even that’s not very important in the short term.  The important aspect at this point is just that the deal is done in time for camp.

After all this idle waiting, I think I’m coming away impressed both by Barstool Bob and by Barstool-less Bobby — sure, this contract took longer to resolve than Ilya Kovalchuk, but neither party panicked, neither side signed or pre-reacted to an offer sheet, neither side took efforts to disparage the other side through the media, and eventually (it seems) they reached an agreement like professionals in time for the season.  If B-Ry can keep his composure this well on the ice, should be a very good year for the kid.

The Ducks still definitely have unresolved issues on the blueline, but adding B-Ry in time for camp is huge.  I guess these modified lyrics sum it up pretty well:

Bobby on board
How I’ve adored
The signing of the new Number Nine.
His offensive style
Is making me smile,
‘Cause now we can ice a second line.
Sure, I’ll confess,
The blueline’s a mess,
But that goal-scoring threat can’t be ignored.
I’m telling you it’s mighty neat.
That it didn’t take an offer sheet
To get my Bobby on board.

Feel free to add your pre-reaction in the comments.

Go Ducks.

THE TELETYPE:
Today, the Ducks announced their TV Schedule for the upcoming season.  As per the recent trend, none of the preseason games will be televised, but surprisingly, all but one of the Ducks regular season games will be broadcast.  The lone omission is a December 21st game against Buffalo which falls in a mandatory blackout window for the VERSUS network.

PRIME TICKET and FS WEST will shoulder 63 games on the Ducks’ schedule, while KDOC HD will broadcast 17 of their contests.  The remaining game (@Boston on 12/20) was announced last month as part of the VERSUS broadcast schedule for the year.  

The Ducks experienced a significant bump in television ratings last season, perhaps the only upside to fallen ticket sales, and that motivated KDOC to add a few games to its broadcast package after the season was already underway.  The local television network will add high definition this year, and six of the 8 games they air after the all-star break will be broadcast during the weeknight primetime hours.

SBN conducted a mock expansion draft with me and James Mirtle as general managers.  Not surprisingly, I took Winnipeg, and James took Quebec.  Here’s my team, with salaries:

 

#	Player	Pos.	Previous Team	10-11	11-12	12-13	13-14
1	Colin White	D	New Jersey Devils	3	3
4	Josh Harding	G	Minnesota Wild	1.2
5	Michael Ryder	F	Boston Bruins	4
8	Radim Vrbata	F	Phoenix Coyotes	3
9	Roman Hamrlik	D	Montreal Canadiens	5.5
11	Dan Carcillo	F	Philadelphia Flyers	1.075
14	Vernon Fiddler	F	Phoenix Coyotes	1.1
15	Dave Steckel	F	Washington Capitals	1.1	1.1	1.1
18	Adam Foote	D	Colorado Avalanche	1
19	Sean O’Donnell	D	Philadelphia Flyers	1
22	BJ Crombeen	F	St. Louis Blues	0.885
23	Jerrod Smithson	F	Nashville Predators	0.75
26	Shawn Horcoff	F	Edmonton Oilers	6.5	6.5	6	4
27	Mattias Ohlund	D	Tampa Bay Lightning	4	5.5	5	3.75
30	Erik Ersberg	G	Los Angeles Kings	0.75
31	Bruno Gervais	D	New York Islanders	0.9
34	Rob Niedermayer	F	Buffalo Sabres	1.15
35	Karlis Skrastins	D	Dallas Stars	1.65
38	Scott Nichol	F	San Jose Sharks	0.76
39	Brian Rolston	F	New Jersey Devils	5	5
41	Tim Jackman	F	Calgary Flames	0.55	0.55
44	John Scott	D	Chicago Blackhawks	0.5	0.5
45	Drew Miller	F	Detroit Red Wings	0.65
48	Rick Rypien	F	Vancouver Canucks	0.55
49	Sami Salo	D	Vancouver Canucks	3.5
52	Ryan Carter	F	Anaheim Ducks	0.725

 

A few key notes:

- With the salary cap, expansion teams today won’t be anywhere near as bad as expansion teams of the past.  You can pretty easily show that a team that does nothing but spend to the cap by signing UFAs will be a playoff bubble team.  So we shouldn’t expect 29-game losing streaks from our two new entrants.

- There will be plenty of veterans with bad contracts left unprotected in the draft.  Presumably Vancouver would have sent me a player or a draft pick in exchange for taking the injured Sami Salo off their hands.

- Cap management was very important to me.  I’m still almost $10M under the cap for 2010-11 and I have just $22M allocated next season.  There are plenty of NHL teams that are in much worse shape going forward, while this expansion team will have lots of flexibility.  If you watched the Jets growing up like I did, you’ll know Winnipeg fans are very patient in waiting for success, so I’ll be able to dump a lot of these guys at the deadline for picks and prospects instead of chasing a first-round playoff exit.

- What was missing from the draft pool was anyone who might qualify as a good, young player.  Josh Harding was probably the best RFA available, and with good reason – why would a team leave discount contracts unprotected?

- We were actually going to draft 30 players each, but by the time we got into the low-20s, there was nobody left worth drafting.  I loaded up on a couple of fight-first players in Rick Rypien and John Scott and picked a player I know nothing about (Ryan Carter) to complete the draft.

- Defense is still undervalued by our SBN blog writers.  From the players they left unprotected, I was able to assemble what I think is a solid defensive corps.  I also picked up several good defensive forwards and two faceoff specialists in Dave ‘Stecks’ Steckel and Scott Nichol.  My PP will probably suck though.

- James and I were nice enough to not collude or trade picks or players. 

- I fully intended to draft Martin Biron, but I left it too long, and James closed out the Rangers

- Long Live the Winnipeg Jets!!!!

Poll

How Many Points will this Expansion Team get in its first season?

• 
  <50
• 
  50-59
• 
  60-69
• 
  70-79
• 
  80-89
• 
  90-99
• 
  100-109
• 
  >109

  83 votes | Results

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