I was supposed to get home on Wednesday night, but a flight delay left me in beautiful Rochester, New York for another night. This wouldn’t have been a terrible thing, if the plastic single mattress in the dorms hadn’t destroyed my back. It was obviously nice to get out of the normal routine, but it’s always demoralizing to see 15-year-old kids that are better at hockey than you.
Only one major thing happened in the hockey world recently, and that was a GM finally sacked up and threw a bunch of money at a major restricted free agent. Philadelphia Flyers GM Paul Holmgren sent out a 14 year $110 Million dollar offer sheet, which Shea Weber immediately signed. This is extra unfortunate because I always hoped to see Shea Weber in a Red Wings uniform, and this contract effectively kills any shot of that. This contract amazingly gives Weber a lower cap hit than Ryan Suter, so kudos to Holmgren for hammering this deal out. Nashville now has less than a week to match it, and I would be shocked if they didn’t. Yes, it is a ton of money for a player on a smaller market team, but, they will kill their team if they lose their #1 and #2 defenseman in the same offseason. Weber is supposed to make $67 of the $110 Million in the first 4 years, and while this is a killer, Nashville has no other choice at this point. Those four first round picks they will get in compensation will be late first round picks and will not have the same impact that Shea Weber would.
According to some other recent reports, Weber took visits to San Jose, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York (obviously for the Rangers, who wants to play for the Islanders), and he worked out a deal with Philly. Apparently, the Red Wings tried to negotiate a contract with Weber and his agent, but talks never got very far; the same goes for trade talks the Wings had with Nashville regarding Weber, they never truly got off the ground. If this is true, this is highly discouraging. It is said that it is not the Red Wings “Modus Operandi” to sign a restricted free agent to an offer sheet, but when you have as horrible of an offseason as the Wings have had, you have to try something. Some may look at is as a scum bag move, but it’s not about making friends, it’s a business. Sometimes you gotta get down and get your hands dirty if you want to make something happen. But who knows, this is probably one of those things that you will never know the whole story of. Maybe Ken Holland was going to change his ways, and throw a ton of cash at Weber and Weber just didn’t want to go to Detroit. Either way, this is bad news for the Red Wings; sure you can say it’s good because Shea Weber might be in the Eastern Conference, but realistically, this just means he will be in Nashville for another 14 years.
To continue with the discouraging Red Wings news, according to Ansar Khan of Mlive, the Wings made a “hell of an offer” for Rick Nash, and it fell on deaf ears. It is not that surprising that Columbus does not want to trade Nash within the division, but the bad news continues to mount for the Wings. I know the Wings have until the trade deadline to tweak their roster, and obviously the uncertainty of the CBA makes them want to be a little cautious spending money, but I really hope that when the trade deadline comes around that the Wings aren’t already eliminated from contention.
On another non-hockey related note, the NBA decided they wanted to become even more tacky (if that were possible with music playing during every possession) and voted to add possibly “$100 Million in revenue” by selling small ads on their jerseys. This means that Adidas is going to remake all of the current jerseys in stores to put small ads on them to make them authentic, and then charge you more money so you can have an up to date jersey (ads will be put on for 2013-2014 season). There is nothing more I hate in sports than ads on jerseys, that stuff is for Soccer only. If the NHL ever decides put ads on their game jerseys (they already have them on practice jerseys) I will probably stop watching the NHL.
The Daily Traub 
