With the uproar of free agency dying down, there are only a few good players left out there still fielding offers. Guys like Mats, Jagr, and me. Mind you, the offers I'm fielding are along the lines of "Do you want to biggie size those fries for only .99 cents?" Admittedly, the offer is not that great, but the term is over 5 years which is what my family and I are looking for.
So over the next few days, hopefully we will all be trying to gain some amount of perspective on something that is called "The Silly Season" for a reason. Players get overpaid in free agency, that's why they love it, and risk the wrath of snubbed fans by turning down extensions to go after it. Overpaying is like doping in the Tour de France. You may not want to do it, but you know everyone else will, so you kind of have to pull your pants down and get on with it.. The screaming in the Leaf-Verse (TM) now is about what Leaf fans consider to be a diabolical contract given to new Leaf Jeff "No Pun Intended" Finger. By merely accepting a $14 million contract, Finger has entered into a potentially macabre circle of hockey hell. A dreaded ville where players cash-in big time and quickly forget what type of play got them there. A place where its rich mayor, His Honor Bryan McCabe (ex mayor: P. Kubina) rules with a benevolent, non-lethal body check. Does Finger know what he could be in for? Who knows. I want to make sure Finger avoids that terrible place, for our sake as much as his. So here's a quick note for Jeff I jotted off on my own personalized stationary. And yes, my name is "Holiday Inn, Long Beach, Calif."
Dear Jeff,
Hey Bro, heard you're coming to town! Awesome! I know you're going to love it. Read something about you in the papers: Yeppers, it is the center of the hockey universe. Yes, there will be a huge scrum of reporters after every game. Get ready to have your every shift examined daily! Dude, you will not believe the scrutiny! That brings me to my point Jeffers. There are already a lot of haters out here expecting you not to be worth the money that Papa Cliff gave to you. In order to survive here, you have to make them forget that, and in a hurry. If you take any advice, take this: On your first shift on home ice, find the nearest Ottawa Senator you can, and kick the living shit out of him. I don't care which one it is, or how you do it, check him, board him, punch him, whatever. Just F the little creep up. Doing things like that on this team, especially to that team, is what we here call "priceless". And J-Dog, priceless is a whole lot more than $14 Large.
Yours Expectantly,
Greener
P.S. Just to be on the safe side, make it on Alfredsson.
In other "news", Mats has yawned away a $20 million deal with the Vancouver Zz-zz-zz's, I mean Canucks. That very day, a magazine was doing a piece on "A Day In the Life of an Agent", and at the very moment that Sundin's agent J.P. Barry heard Mats say he was turning down all that money, the photographer captured this image:
- Normally I would never, ever send any of you, my friends over to that site, but this is an exception as a good article by Alec Brownscombe makes a hopeful case that, considering the market, Jeff Finger might be a better signing than we all think.
- Steve continues a lifetime of caring and sharing by saving my links bacon yet again with this piece on future Leaf and current handsome devil Dmitri Vorobiev.
- While we're on notes of potential hope, please take a gander-Newfoundlander at a piece I wrote in April about absolutely-will-make-the-Leafs-out-of-camp, Nikolai Kulemin.
- Our own co-hostess with the mostest, MF37, returns from an internet free vacation to find that the Leafs had begun the most massive team overhaul since 1967 when, after winning the Cup, Ballard sold everything not nailed down that his asshole, money-grubbing, pig-hands could grasp on to.
- Lastly and absolutely leastly, Moose puts the final period on the free-agency, uh, period, by starting off with the most detestable Jeff Finger pun yet, but then saving himself with a post reviewing what that rest of the NHL did and didn't do well this UFA week. /
SEXY 12:30 EST UPDATE: The Leafs have acquired Mikhail Grabovski from Montreal for prospect Greg Pateryn and a 2nd round pick in 2010.
To The Comments!