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I’m surfing through some salary information at the moment and came across a couple of interesting things. The two teams that spent the most money on salary this year in the NHL? Philadelphia and Chicago. This is actual dollars, not cap hits. The Hawks spent $64.5MM - in a league with a $56.8MM cap and Philly spent $62MM.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Islanders spent only $38MM, plus whatever bonuses Tavares hit. I’d think that he, at most, hit his “A” schedule bonuses of $850K. The three hockey players who took the most money out of the Islanders this year? Rick DiPietro, Mark Streit and Alexei Yashin. Ouch. You’d have to think that Sheldon Souray might be attractive to them, because you can pay him less than his cap hit. In a related story, the Islanders are picking fifth in the draft.

I’ve got escrow on the mind at the moment - I’m working on something longer that talks about the NHLPA and escrow - but if I endured the waking hell that must be playing for the New York Islanders (all forms of waking hell are relative, obviously), it would drive me completely insane that I was paying part of my salary back to the NHL so that the Blackhawks and Flyers can spend far more money than they’re ostensibly permitted to. At the very least, I’d hope that the Hawks would reward me with a Stanley Cup ring - if they’re giving them out to people who carefully built explosives set for July 1 into the foundation of the Hawks, they really ought to give them to people who’ve done nothing to hurt them and actually took money from their own pockets to pay the league back for the Hawks’ and Flyers’ profligacy.

Jim Matheson takes a look at the work that the Oilers have to get through during the off-season:

Ethan Moreau is on the clock, starting Tuesday. It may be the same story with Patrick O’Sullivan and Robert Nilsson.

National Hockey League teams have a two-week window from June 15-30 to buy out players, but the Edmonton Oilers aren’t going to rush into anything.

They will try to trade their captain first, just as they tried at the deadline in early March. A contending team may be interested in Moreau for a draft pick.

O’Sullivan and Nilsson, while 10 years younger, will almost surely be shopped first, as well, off their lukewarm stats last season, and with one year left on contracts that pay them $2.9 million and $2 million, respectively.

If trades can’t be worked out, Moreau would be bought out at two-thirds because he’s over 26; the other two at one-third.

I will believe that there’s a trade market for Ethan Moreau if and when I see it. The only teams I could plausibly see being willing to trade something for Moreau are those teams which were out of the race in 2009-10 and think that they’ll be in it next year. Otherwise, why not acquire Moreau a few months ago and get the bonus of an extra playoff run? I don’t see how there might be a market for him.

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One of the (many) things that drives me nuts about the Oilers’ philosophy is their seeming inability to mesh a number of different approaches to acquiring talent. They’re either in build through free agency/big trade mode or they’re in build through the draft mode. There’s a cost to this singlemindedness and rigid adherence to some sort of a grand plan, as it prevents you from taking advantage of opportunities that might crop up. Lowe made the following comments the other day:

“We’ve got to get back to what we did for a lot of years,” said Lowe, who was promoted in 2008 after eight seasons as general manager. “We’ve got to get back to our basic principles of drafting and development, get out of the free agent business.”

…

“It just seems to be in recent NHL history that the only way you become a contender is you have to go to the back of the bus for a while and regroup,” Lowe said. “We had a pile of injuries this year to key players and in some respects — having been at this for 10 years now — it’s a blessing in disguise.

“It’s almost like something hit us in the side of the head and said, ‘OK, if you guys can’t figure this out yourself, then we’re going to do it for you.’”

This, along with quotes from Steve Tambellini, have kind of suggested to me that the Oilers are out of the business of trying to plug holes on the team by acquiring top of the roster players from other teams. There seems to be a fair amount of support for this from people who were disappointed when Nikolai Khabibulin, Dustin Penner and Sheldon Souray didn’t put the Oilers over the top. The ill-fated wooing of Dany Heatley and unfortunate Michael Nylander incident, along with a lot of people rejecting the Oilers’ money along the way, hasn’t done much to convince fans of the Oilers of the value in trying to acquire players this way.

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I’m reasonably certain that Ice Edge isn’t going to get the Coyotes. When Glendale is faced with a choice between Reinsdorf and Ice Edge, with Reinsdorf asking for as much as $165MM of Glendale money and Ice Edge asking for very little and they indicate a preference for Reinsdorf; well, either the fix is in or they don’t believe in the capacity of Ice Edge to fund the transaction and the team. I’m not usually much of conspiracy theorist, so I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. The fact that the public face of the Ice Edge group seems to basically be a lot like me in that he’s from Western Canada, in his thirties and likes taking shots at reporters doesn’t exactly lead me to the conclusion that he’s got the kind of money necessary to buy an NHL team.

Where the Reinsdorf transaction will get interesting is in how the funds provided by Glendale are treated for the purposes of hockey related revenue - are the players entitled to a cut? The Reinsdorf deal proposes that Glendale funds up to $65MM of the purchase price and then pays up to $100MM of losses over seven years, with the amount being limited to $25MM in a given year. That’s a potential additional $90MM or so for the players over the next seven years, something that the owners presumably won’t be thrilled to pick up so that Phoenix can maintain a team in the NHL.

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1. Jonas Gustavsson
2. Carey Price
3. Tuukka Rask

I don’t have a Vezina ballot - the trophy is voted on by NHL general managers - but if I was an NHL GM, that’s how I’d vote. I suspect that this is a little different than the consensus. Reasoning after the jump.

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In keeping with yesterday’s theme of prospects using the CBA to put themselves into a more favourable situation, I thought I’d draw some attention to Cory Schneider. If Mike Gillis is as astute as I think he is, Schneider will be traded before free agency opens.

If he isn’t traded before free agency opens, Schneider makes an even better target for an offer sheet than Josh Harding last year. Schneider has a pretty bulletproof resume - he’s presently amongst the top twenty THN prospects and Hockey’s Future has him at 32.

A couple of CBA quirks make Schneider an attractive target. First of all, he’ll become an unrestricted free agent if he doesn’t play at least 30 minutes in 21 games next season. In Roberto Luongo’s last seven seasons, the backups have played at least 30 minutes in 21 games just once. Barring injury, it’s something that seems unlikely to happen.

Second, you can’t trade players in the first season of a contract that was matched in free agency. If the Oilers (or someone else) gave an offer sheet to Schneider that Vancouver matched, they’d be stuck with him, unable to trade him to someone else. If he didn’t end up playing 30 minutes in 21 games, he’d become a free agent at the end of the season.

Third, on re-reading the CBA it now seems to me that qualifying offers can consist of both signing bonus and salary and, unless I’ve missed something, that there’s no limit on the amount that can be counted as a signing bonus. So, for example, if the limit at which the compensation for an RFA is a second round draft pick is $3MM, a contract could provide for $1MM in salary and $2MM in signing bonus.

Imagine the scenario that the Canucks would face if Schneider signed such an offer sheet. They’d have to choose between accepting a second round draft pick for a player identified as an elite prospect, one who is ready to step into the NHL, or pay him $3MM to back up Roberto Luongo next season, with a strong likelihood that he’ll be an unrestricted free agency at the end of the 2010-11 season.

Is a top goaltending prospect worth a second round pick and $2MM? I’d have to think that the answer to this is “yes.” Second round draft picks aren’t free. While we don’t know what sort of signing bonuses they usually get, something in the range of $150,000 to $200,000 wouldn’t surprise me. If they spend the three years of their ELC in the minors, you can add another $200,000 to the bill - and that’s for an uncertain return.

For a rebuilding team, the opportunity to grab an elite prospect for nothing more than money and a draft pick seems like a heck of a deal. I fully expect that Gillis will move Schneider before July 1 but if he doesn’t…well, moves like this would represent a smart use of money that would assist in turning the Oilers around.

I’m not really a prospect guy but I’ve found the whole Riley Nash situation from the perspective of negotiations and leverage and all that interesting stuff. Nash was an Oilers’ first round pick in 2007, taken with the 21st pick, which they acquired with the 30th and 36th picks of the draft from Phoenix. Guy Flaming has a quote from Nash on his blog about Nash’ future:

When you’re 3 years in it’s obviously something that crosses your mind. I like Edmonton, I like what they’re doing and I think that they have a lot of good years ahead of them but… at the same time I’ve got to see what’s best for me. My main goal is to play in the NHL in the next few years and that’s what it comes down to. I want to help an organization in the NHL and fulfill that dream so i have to look at all aspects of it. I’ve talked to my advisor and we kind of go around in circles about it and what’s going to happen here. Like I said before, I’m in no hurry to sign anything because there is a lot going on but at the same time I’d like to get on with my professional career.

Flaming goes on to speculate that Nash might not end up being an Edmonton Oiler, something that they went into in a bit more detail on the show. Somewhat aggravatingly, they didn’t ask the key question: are there any circumstances in which Riley Nash is willing to sign a contract with the Edmonton Oilers? They speculate, but, for reasons known only to them, they don’t actually put the question to him. Instead it’s all couched in Soviet-style language that’s fairly impenetrable, with Nash muttering things about not being a priority and some talk that the Oilers website listing him at 174 pounds instead of 191 pounds is an issue of some sort.

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Confidential to Craig M.: How do you square the fact that you’re taking an MBA that is based, in part, on case studies, which are basically an opportunity to pick apart the decision making of others and learn from what they did, with the following statement about Sam Gagner: “Decisions are never made in hindsight so it’s never really that productive to go back and analyze what we could have done three years ago”?

* * *

Imagine, for a minute, that you’re Kevin Lowe. You’ve got six Stanley Cup rings, a bank account, a house and a car. Nine assets? Holy mackerel! Life is pretty good.

You’ve got a problem though. As a result of your decision to add Sam Gagner to the team in 2007 instead of letting him finish his career in junior and then spend a year in the American Hockey League, Gagner will be eligible for unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2014 instead of the summer of 2017. Moreover, Gagner’s up for a new contract this year. He’s been alright through his first three seasons; he’s established himself as an NHLer, although the jury is probably still out as to whether he’s going to be a star or a second tier guy. While you’re no longer the titular head of the team, shortly after the season ends you’re going to get a telegram from Steve Tambellini asking what the results of his assessment of Gagner are and what he should do as far as a contract for him.

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There are certain parallels between the Kansas City Royals and Edmonton Oilers that go beyond analytically inclined fans (possibly because both Kansas City and Edmonton offer little to do beyond obsess over the circumstances of the local sporting concern). Neither franchise has been particularly relevant since the salad days in the 1980’s, both franchises have a history of clumsy totalitarian actions when criticized and neither has particularly innovative management at the moment. Rany Jazayerli summed up my experience as an Oilers fan a few months back when he wrote:

I can’t keep writing five-thousand-word screeds every time Moore makes the Royals the laughingstock of baseball, and besides, I’m at the point where I’m repeating myself every time I write about a player acquisition. It’s hard not to repeat myself when the Royals keep repeating themselves.

Still, as a general rule of thumb, any time the Royals make a move that inspires friends to send emails of condolences and #royalsfail to become a trending topic on Twitter, I have to write something.

If there’s a distinction to be drawn between the Oilers and the Royals, it’s that the Oilers are a rather wealthy team at the moment, if a bad one. The owner says that the general manager (whoever that might really be) is free to do what he wants to make the team better. With that in mind, I thought I’d point out how a wealthy team could do some rebuilding through restricted free agency.

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