Canucks need to go big and spend, or just stay home
Look at the teams still alive in the National Hockey League playoffs. Pittsburgh (Marian Hossa), Dallas (Brad Richards), San Jose (Brian Campbell), and Colorado (traded for Adam Foote and Ruslan Salei and signed Peter Forsberg): those teams made the biggest moves at the February trade deadline.
The Philadelphia Flyers (Daniel Briere), New York Rangers (Scott Gomez, and Chris Drury) and Detroit Red Wings (Brian Rafalski) were among the biggest spenders in free agency last summer. In less than a year, all of those teams significantly altered the looks of their hockey clubs and all have advanced to the second round of the playoffs.
Oh sure, there was a price to be paid in each case--either cash or assets--but right now those teams are all raking in the dough by playing into the second round and beyond. There's an old adage in sports that you either 'Go big or go home', and going big seems to have worked for all of those teams.
It's pretty clear that change can be a very good thing. There's a lesson in there somewhere for new general manager Mike Gillis and the Vancouver Canucks as they head into one of the most-important off-seasons in franchise history.
Comments
1 Comments
shopjock
Apr 29, 2008 at 4:17pm
Easy comments to say about Hossa, Richards, Campbell Foote and Salei. But not Forsberg as it appears he had no intention of going anywhere but Colorado and with regards to Briere, Gomez, Drury and Rafalski, they were all free agents last year when the Canucks didn't have the money to spend because of Burkes past contract signings.
This year they have 20 mill to spend but a desert when it comes to free agents. So with a good nucleus an excellent goaltender and the above mentioned monies Gillis has one year to perform or the fans will never forgive the owners for what appears to be a botch when they fired the manager and not the coach as I'm sure the players they didn't trade for this year was because they wouldn't fit his system of coaching (see Nasland).