As so many of us know, tailored Zoot Suites, tattoo removal and trashing random Hummers can significantly increase one's cost of living, to say nothing of the prohibitive impact the crickets and rodents needed to feed one's pet python can have on one's weekly grocery bill. So we can hardly blame Ray Emery for looking for a significant raise now that he is a restricted free agent over the paltry $600,000 he made last year.
No. 1 netminder Ray Emery will file for arbitration by today's deadline...and he is going be seeking close to the $4.5 million a season that Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro is getting in the 15-year deal he signed last summer.
It's interesting to note that, given Emery's RFA status, no other team has put in an offer sheet, if only to force Murray to match the dollars or lose him for a couple of draft picks and a bag of pucks. A poison pill, if you will. Peter Kormanos, that fun loving owner of the Hartford Hurricanes created quite the stir a few years back by doing just that to Detroit. Emery's salary expectations combined with the sorry state Ottawa's goaltending would be left in if we lost him would seem, at least to the eyes of a non-Genius Hockey Dude such as your humble scribe, to be the perfect storm the other GMs would exploit to fatally weaken what should be a solid contender next year (yeah Gainey, I'm looking at you). And yet...nary a peep.
So Ray, what conclusions are we to draw from this? Well, no matter what your agent tells you between Mai Tais, you may not quite be ready for DiPietro money. Yes you were good. Yes, you were a large part of our run to the Finals. But $4.5M a year?
So here's my idea Ray. We'll swap you for DiPietro straight up for one year. You can spend the season playing behind the Islanders defence and Ricco can spend a year playing behind ours. Then we'll compare numbers again. If you're close, you get your four-and-a-half mil, an unlimited supply of rental cars to mutilate and your pick of the Puck Bunnies that prowl the hallway outside the dressing room. If not, than we keep DiPietro and you get to sign a 15 year contract with Chuckie Wang. He might even throw in a Hummer every now and then to keep things interesting.
Keeper Of The Farm? [Ottawa Sun]
2 comments:
Awesome suggestion. Ray's not worth 4.5 M, that's for #1 overall picks, not 99th picks.
Some hockey players are so "lucky" to have their best season directly before their contract expires. I think the fact that Emery hasn't got an offer sheet yet shows how much other teams' GM's thought of his contribution to the Senators' playoff run last year.
hummer...teehee
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