Letter to Darcy Regier
Posted 12:24 PM ET | Comments 8
Dear Darcy,
I want to preface this by saying I think you have had some very difficult circumstances in which to deal with these past 2 seasons, and I commend you for your hard work and efforts. I think you have done an excellent job at adding great young prospects through the draft and trades. You had a great deal of foresight as it pertained to the rule changes, and that foresight has helped us reach the ECF 2 years in a row. Having said all this, I have a couple of questions.
First, Darcy, with all that you were able to predict about the game changing; why is it that you could not predict the bevy of young forwards coming up the pipeline that could have easily filled the role of Al Kotalik? Why did we spend 2 and a half million that could have been used to lock up Briere last season? I feel that Paille was ready, and we knew Stafford was maybe a year away. Too much to give a 1-dimensional player when you knew our two captains, our heart and soul and our chance at a cup were UFA's the following year.
The other thing I would like to ask, is how could you treat Daniel Briere the way you did when you pompously put a non-pay raise offer on the table. An offer similar to the one he was seeking a year before. That is nothing more than a slap in the face, and speaks volumes as to how this organization runs things. The ramifications stretch further than just losing Briere. What happens when our young RFA's, and other potential free agents see what has transpired between Buffalo's front office, and one of their so called/should be franchise players. Its not going to look good.
Finally Darcy, please use this as a lesson. Contracts will go up every year. Yes, they will. Its obvious the league is headed back to the way it used to be, and for the small markets to survive, they need to anticipate this, and dish out some long term deals. Its not a tragedy to ink you core players long term. I'm tired of looking back and saying, "If only we'd locked him up 2 years ago."
I want to preface this by saying I think you have had some very difficult circumstances in which to deal with these past 2 seasons, and I commend you for your hard work and efforts. I think you have done an excellent job at adding great young prospects through the draft and trades. You had a great deal of foresight as it pertained to the rule changes, and that foresight has helped us reach the ECF 2 years in a row. Having said all this, I have a couple of questions.
First, Darcy, with all that you were able to predict about the game changing; why is it that you could not predict the bevy of young forwards coming up the pipeline that could have easily filled the role of Al Kotalik? Why did we spend 2 and a half million that could have been used to lock up Briere last season? I feel that Paille was ready, and we knew Stafford was maybe a year away. Too much to give a 1-dimensional player when you knew our two captains, our heart and soul and our chance at a cup were UFA's the following year.
The other thing I would like to ask, is how could you treat Daniel Briere the way you did when you pompously put a non-pay raise offer on the table. An offer similar to the one he was seeking a year before. That is nothing more than a slap in the face, and speaks volumes as to how this organization runs things. The ramifications stretch further than just losing Briere. What happens when our young RFA's, and other potential free agents see what has transpired between Buffalo's front office, and one of their so called/should be franchise players. Its not going to look good.
Finally Darcy, please use this as a lesson. Contracts will go up every year. Yes, they will. Its obvious the league is headed back to the way it used to be, and for the small markets to survive, they need to anticipate this, and dish out some long term deals. Its not a tragedy to ink you core players long term. I'm tired of looking back and saying, "If only we'd locked him up 2 years ago."
I agree but at the same time, do you tie up 12-15 million bucks of cap space on two players? With the emergence of Stafford and Paille, I say dump kotalik at first possible chance, keep one of the captains and lock up vanek long term.
Kotalik came off of a good 05-06 season. If he kept that intensity up we probably wouldn't be talking about trading him right now. Its easy now to say that we should have invested that money in briere last season. But who knew at the end of last year that kotalik wouldn't play as good this year? He's got a cannon but has proven to be inconsisten this year, something we wouldn't have known entirely until now. Also, if I remember correctly I think they had an offer out for briere last year but they couldn't get it worked out before he went to arbitration. I agree with you on your assessment that we could trade kotalik now to free up money and allow our prospects a shot at the squad. But we can't really judge darcy for what he did at the end of last season based upon the results of this season. Hind sight is 20/20.
MillerTime07, I see your point, and many people may have wanted Kotalik last year, but I for one hated the move the second it happened. I knew immediatly that we would lose Briere. Regeir, being the GM, should have anticipated this as well, and that is my point. Kotalik to me is untradable. We will not be able to move him at that salary with his production. Nickzak, I am not contesting keeping both Briere and Drury. I am a realist and understand it is not conceivable, no matter what happened last year, but its important to keep one of them. I can see, and appreciate all of your points. Thanks for reading!
If you wanna talk Hind sight, then lets. First off if we were going to spend that type of money why didnt we spend it on JP dumont instead ?? if you wanted to sign your core players last year at 4 million and they wanted 5 why didnt you ?? why not throw the money you spent on Jaro spacek at someone else or try to resign McKee ??? it doesnt do any good at looking in the past. whats done is done. we can only learn from the mistakes we have made and move on. I think Darcy is one of the smartest hockey minds out there. we are in good hands. He does know what hes doing but that said nobody gets them right all the time. We can only hope that Darcy and the rest of the Management will do the right thing for the organization. whether it be resign the guys we have or go out and get a wes walz to replace Drury and maybe a Jason Allison or Resign Z to Replace Briere or Resign all of them. See we wont know what the right move was until about 8 to 10 months from now and hopefully our Hind sight will make Darcy and the gang look Like genius' .....
What if two years from now neither of these guys are worth 4 Mil let alone the 7 and 8 Mil they may get? That being said they should have offered them both 6 Mil for 5 years. If they turned it down let them go. These are good players but there is no reason for Regier to panic and deviate from what has made them successful.The young players you spoke of are the reason they can let these two go.
common sense update: kotalik has nothing at all to do with the $ problems CAUSED by Regier. one CANNOT talk about all the foresight and ingenuity AT THE SAME TIME he allowed 12 to go to free agency last year and the two most important players this year. both ideas DO NOT fall on the same side of logic. if this was 'THE" team, over half of those players should have been locked up earlier, and for many millions cheaper. and if the two captains were to sign here at big bucks, and then end up being overpaid, they can simply be waived. that point is completely irelevant to anything, although i've heard local sports wags spewing it. it happens all the time in sports: players not worth their contracts are ditched.
i think you have to look back to last season because there is no way darcy cant be blamed...briere wanted "drury money" with a lot of years, he was a simple 3.5-4 million per over 5 years and it was a done deal. cant blame him for jaro though, he seemed to be just what we needed and simply didnt perform...on the j.p dumont comment, we had an offer just as good as nashville, he chose to leave. that said, it will be interesting to see if management can coax one of the captains to return after they are seeing all those $$$ being thrown at them from other teams