Has anyone noticed the rather quite free agent market this year. Sure Ilya Kovalchuk has attracted an incredible amount attention this summer. But after that it's been a big bore. There are a significant number of skilled veterans unsigned and waiting at home for the phone to ring. For those fortunate enough to have signed contracts, they have for the most part been short contracts (okay there was that one contract for 17 years). Meanwhile for the many part teams also have cap space available but not willing to use.
Wonder what's going on?
The current CBA has only 2 years remaining and from the noise coming from both sides the league could be looking at another disruption to its schedule. Prior to the previous lockout, some teams wisely left themselves with very few players under contract going into that uncertain period. For example, the Boston Bruins only had 8 players under contract when lockout concluded. Other teams like the Maple Leafs either didn't believe the lockout would change much or were convinced they had a shot at a Cup in the season leading into the lockout. As a result they came out of the lockout with a whole bunch of ugly contracts. To make matters worse, some were with players who were not well suited for the post-trap game that is now being played.
To provide flexibility in this uncertain times, GMs are trying to better manage their roster and are only signing core players to long term contract. So 13 years for Roberto Luongo or Alex Ovechkin is fine. But Alexei Ponikarovsky and Alex Frolov were only able to land one-year deals because they are only depth players. So far Paul Kariya and Marty Turko have failed to land a team. The Maple Leafs have only 5 players signed for beyond 2 years and their cap hit totals just $21 million. Quite a different situation compared to 5 years ago.
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