We’ve seen this movie before
It’s a pretty common phenomena: come to Detroit, have a career year, then get paid. The most obvious examples would be Martin Lapointe and Mathieu Schneider. Each player had their best seasons of their careers in Detroit shortly before their contract expired. Lapointe won two Cups but Schneids never got to raise the silver chalice in Detroit. Here is each player’s best year to date:
Lapointe: 2000-01
GP: 82, 27 goals, 30 assists = 57 points
Schneider: 2005-06
GP: 72, 21 goals, 38 assists = 59 points
Dan Cleary is the latest iteration of a player who greatly elevated his game while sporting the Winged Wheel. He’s also poised to have the best season of his professional career. Here is how his stats project for the entire year:
Games played: 82
Goals: 30
Assists: 28
Points: 58
Plus/Minus: +33
Those numbers are pretty close to Lapointe’s numbers before Boston offered him a contract Detroit refused to match. For all the talk about how the Red Wings overspend, Lapointe was a pretty good example of that not being true. Sure, if there wasn’t a salary cap Nick Lidstrom would be the highest paid player in the league. There’s a difference between rewarding a legendary player and simply overpaying for a run-of-the mill mucker coming off a career season.
It looks like there’s a very good chance Dan Cleary is going to test the open market and see what kind of offer he can draw. You can bet Ken Holland will continue to try and get a deal done and if that doesn’t happen he’ll likely ask Cleary and his agent to give the Wings a chance to match or beat any offer he gets. That was the case with Lapointe, but Schneider - who didn’t seem to get along very well with Mike Babcock - signed with Anaheim without another thought of playing in Detroit. He’s had an injury-plagued season and is on pace to put up his lowest point total for a reasonably full season since 2001-02.
I really hope the Red Wings can find a way to sign Cleary to a new deal. He seems like a Mike Babcock kind of player, which Robert Lang and Mathieu Schneider clearly were not. He could easily fit into the core of a very good Red Wings team that would include: Nicklas Lidstrom, Brian Rafalski, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Valtteri Filppula, Niklas Kronwall, Tomas Holmstrom, Kris Draper and Chris Osgood. The team had a great chance to win the Cup last year and they look like they’ll have a great shot this year. There are guys on this team who clearly want to sacrifice some bank for the opportunity to make the playoffs every year and have a legit shot at winning the Stanley Cup more often than not.
But if Cleary gets offered stupid money you can’t really fault him for going that route. NHL players sacrifice quite a bit and free agency gives a player the right to seek out whatever it is he wants, whether it be to play for a contender, seek a significant pay increase or - if he’s lucky - both. Lapointe’s made mad money but he also missed out an opportunity to get his name etched onto the Cup a third time. Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya played for peanuts [relatively speaking] in Colorado but didn’t win bupkis.
As far as pending unrestricted free agents go, I’d rank their importance to the Red Wings like so:
1. Dan Cleary
2. Chris Chelios [not an issue since he’s staying in Detroit]
3. Andreas Lilja
4. Dominik Hasek
5. Aaron Downey
6. Dallas Drake
There are two other key signings: Valtteri Filppula is a restricted free agent this summer and Hank Zetterberg can be signed to a new contract beginning this summer prior to the final year of his current contract. I’d put signing both players ahead of signing Cleary in terms of importance to the franchise.
With Chicago opting to pay Patrick Sharp close to $4 million per season to keep him from testing the free agent waters the Wings are probably going to have to offer somewhere close to $3 million per season to lock Cleary up long-term. At that amount I can understand why Ken Holland is hesistant to work out a deal right now. The Wings need to make an offer to Cleary they are very comfortable with and then wait until they sign Fil and Z before deciding to up the ante for Cleary.
So don’t be suprised if this drags on until the summer. Let’s just hope Holland also has a plan B in place just in case Cleary does get offered ridiculous money. He probably had an inkling Schneider was gone last season and was able to replace him quite capably in very short order when he signed Brian Rafalski.
Dan Cleary Martin Lapointe Mathieu Schneider Red WingsNo Comments
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