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"The First Ducks Blog on MyHockeyBuzz"
ANAHEIM DUCKS PSEUDO GM • 2009 Years Old • Male
Free agency this year is like a hike. You either stay on the trail or you can go into the bushes and risk stratching and clawing your way to where you want to go. Once you're on the trail you're locked in and once you're in the bushes you get lost and are locked in as well. The trail really represent the lucrative contracts that have been handed out to the Drurys and the Brieres and the Gomezes. The trail is like the market, once a Drury gets a huge contract then Briere gets a huge contract, except it happened the other way around this year in terms of timing. Once one person chooses the trail, then other people follow. With the bushes, you scratch and claw your way to the finish but you get there faster and are less worn out than your competitors. Teams that were willing to make the sacrifice and hit the bushes will benefit in the long run. The Anaheim Ducks were somewhat in the bushes in that they had to come up with a pretty darn good plan to "replace" Scott Niedermayer, should he retire. He is leaning in that direction and I think Brian Burke did an astute thing in signing Schneider to a deal that is less that what Souray will likely get. Schneider is slightly more defensively gifted than Souray and can still provide an offensive spark. If Niedermayer doesn't return, then the Ducks defense drops a level, but they can still scratch and claw their way into playoff and Stanley Cup contention. If Niedermayer returns, the Ducks will field one of the best defenses, if not the best defense the league has ever seen. But even after one day of free agency, we aren't even close to the end of the trail. This is just the deciding point of where teams decide to go: the bushes or the trail.
Filed Under:   Free Agency   Ducks   Flyers   Sabres   Rangers  
July 3, 2007 12:21 AM ET | Delete
Dude we got Bertuzzi!!! Yay!!! We're nastier than ever before!!! Is it safe to call us the most hated team in the NHL??
July 3, 2007 1:16 AM ET | Delete
The Ducks were the most hated team in the NHL without Bertuzzi, as a Canucks fan, I hate the Ducks even more now.
July 3, 2007 10:23 AM ET | Delete
Well I'm over the Moore thingamabobber, but this is definitely "in the bushes" for Burke....if he isn't replacing Selanne(which I'm starting to think this wasn't necessarily for that), then he's crudely making the team much better. If you think about the caliber of players he's added, it's ridiculous. IF we had room under the cap to keep everyone if both Scott and Teemu don't retire, we would have Selanne, Niedermayer, Bertuzzi, McDonald, Pronger, Beauchemin, Getzlaf. That's a starstudded lineup.
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