On to Brassard...

I'm with you chuck. For 1 year not happy with this but for 5 years at 5 per more than reasonable in todays nhl where numbers are skyrocketing. With the cap set to take a good jump upward the next 2 years this contract will not be a killer and we have a young center for 5 years in his prime with a year of av's system under his belt and should only get better. Also buys out the 4 years of ufa which there is a price to do so. Would have been great to get 5 yrs for 4 but thats not realistic and looking at next years center free agents you have spezza and krejci and little else and both will either be resigned with current teams or go 7 plus. The salary that is hurting us is nash at 7.8 with the production value much lower who needs to step up and produce. Everybody we needed signed is signed and moore will be shortly. I anticipate a multi-year with zucc sometime after new years so the big question to me now is what slats decides to do with staal. I hope they can sign him longterm also but I anticipate that will also be a decision after january when they see if he will physically hold up and how he's playing. I don't see a staal trade unless they've already decided the they will not be resigning him. Glad sather somewhat controlled himself this season not gorging himself on a lot of these overpriced free agents and outside of maybe glass for a few dollars less I think with some youth added to the team for next season we will be ready to go.

 

31, I liked dubi when he was here also and agree he is a much more physical player but don't see where the giant difference in their abilities are now. The last couple of years dubs had 10 and 16 goals and 34 and 50 points and brass had 16 and 18 goals and 41 and 45 points pretty much the same. And for that dubs is gonna be paid and extra 850,000 per year. I think in the long run the rangers make out ok with this deal.

 

.568 points per game in his career for Dubi. .558 points per game in his career for Brass. Brass is 1.5 years younger. Brass has done really well here in the playoffs. The numbers are what they are. I think Dubi is a little better also, but the numbers show what they show, and Brass is younger. And Dubi's cap hit is 850 K more than Brassard's cap hit.

Is what it is.

 

I am with you bro, I think Dubi is better also as I said despite the #'s, but I think it does show that in today's NHL Brassard's deal is just not crazy or way out of line.

We'll see how it goes I guess.

 

I think Step and Brass would both benefit by putting on 5 - 10 lbs. of muscle. Both skilled, but I believe need to be harder to separate from puck. Hopefully there in the gym as I type. They both have at best average speed, so need to be able to fend off checkers a little better. They are going to be our top 2 centers this year so they need to put the work in over the summer. A sub-par year by either of them will hurt our chances of making the playoffs

 

Bottom line is that if Brass puts up the extra 10-12 points or so, like we expect him to, then this is a good deal.

If he puts up 10 points less than this past year, its a pretty bad deal.

Only time will tell.....

 

Would rather have brassard at 27 than leg wand at 33. And while we can have a team of spare parts that make less for a year or 2 at a time I'd rather see a team built from younger core players that will be here for a while. I think sather and groton has done a good job this offseason losing guys that are very replaceable and keeping the ones we wanted to go forward with. The only one that signed for a reasonable contract was boyle but he left because he wants to play on one of the top 3 lines for tampa which he wasn't going to be able to do here. I think the way sather and groton have gone about the offseason and I think its probably more groton than sather calling the shots behind the curtain tells me they are confident we have some youngsters that are going to take spots and add to the team this season and if their right to me thats the best way to go. Can't wait for camp and the preseason to start already

 

The team was successful later year because they had 4 good centers. This year who knows how Miller/Lombardi Will turn out but last year Step/BR/Brass has over and under 50 points. The team cannot afford to have a nonproductive 3rd line center. We'll see...

Also, I think posters are overreacting. Players will put up better numbers, CK, Nash, Brass, will be better. More offense will be produced by Boyle. My only concern is size... The team got smaller this offseason.

 

Again, to me anyone can say I don't want the Rangers to be the team to sign Brassard to this deal. I honestly don't think many can say it was a bad contract and he wouldn't have gotten at least this deal next summer, he clearly would have IMO. This is where the NHL is now. Just reality. You might want to say let some other team sign Brass to that deal, but I just don't think anyone can say this deal we way over-paid and no shot Brass gets that next summer, he would have and then some IMO.

Is what it is now with NHL contracts.

If he scores 50 or more points and 17 or more goals, both VERY doable, this contract will be fine IMO.

 

very valid points but its not all about numbers, you can just see how brassards line cycles the puck better and gets more scoring chances, he finds open guy and has good chemistry with zucc, stepan has better numbers? well no kidding, he plays more minutes, plays more PP minutes too. He also plays with our best players (supposidly).

Brassard had a tough start to his career, very injury prone and was terrible, i'm not going to lie, but hes only 27, some players take longer time to develope or needs to be in a system to succeed. Brassard is by far great in this system, he is also clutcher in the post season as we just saw.

now i dont love the deal 4mil would be better but what you guys are not factoring in, is that there are no Centers available out there, and that being said brassard knows that and used it as leverage, i rather have brassard at 5 mil then nobody there and we suck even more at center.

something about stepan this past season turned me off, like this dude has let me down especially this post season, he doesn't generate any offense by himself, he doesn't take the body, hes not a leader, hes just there, getting 50 points a season with the most PP minutes for a center and more ice time for a center, plays with nash. Of course hes going to get 50 points, its pretty easy when you have so many opportunites to succeed. now im not giving up hes young but i dont see that he has good vision or good feel for the game, hopefully AV works with him and he levels up soon.

 

So your claim is despite the fact that Stepan is 3 years younger, despite the fact that Stepan has clearly better numbers, despite the fact that Stepan's numbers are trendng up while at best Brassard's numbers are trending neutral, despite the fact that Stepan is at .67 points per game in his career while Brass is at .558 points per game in his career, Brassard is better than Stepan. Okay, fair enough. Like I said it is 100% fair for anyone to have that opinion, that is how opinions work, but just understand that there are no facts to back up that opinion.

And if you feel from today forward Brass will be better than Step, I say certainly possible. Anything can happen. Maybe he will be, but we need to see it happen before we can use that as a fact why we think Brass is better than Step. Maybe next year at this time Step is coming off a down season, and Brass a great one, and the conversation will have changed. But today that is not the case.

I also think it is kind of funny how we quote Stepan playing with Nash, yet at the same time most in here knock Nash, which is it? And in the playoffs this past season Stepan had more points than Brassard. And in the regular season, Stepan only played a little over 2 mpg more than Brass, and the two actually had the same amount of PP points, which means no point edge for Stepan on the PP.

With that said, I like the Brass signing. To me people are missing the market if they don't think Brass gets 5 mill as a UFA next summer (barring a bad season). He clearly would have. BUT even if you want to be ultra-conservative Brass was getting somewhere between 4.5 and 5.5 per IMO. So worst case we overpaid by 500 K. Best case we got a 500 K value. Now I happen to think he would have gotten closer to 5.5 as a UFA next summer assuming he went to the highest bidder, but either way this wasn't some way over the top deal by Sather where he wasted an extra 1 mill or more in cap space on Brass.

If Brass steps up his game a little, which I think he will, this deal will be very solid for us and him. A C who scores 50 + points and 17 or more goals is worth a 5 mill cap hit in the NHL today, and I think Brass will be there this season making this a very good deal for us.

I like Kreider/Stepan/MSL AND Nash/Brass/Zucc as our top two lines. That would be a nightmare for other teams to deal with IMO.

 

Chuck, don't know if AV has considered it but I would like to see those lines also. Step and kreids and brass and zucc are good duos. I think msl with step until duclair gets up here and nash with brass and zucc would be good line combos. I also think brass adds to his numbers this year with addl time he'll gets both 2nd line center and PP time now that richards not here for the full 2 minutes(ugh) anymore. Mr. sleeps, agree step needs to introduce himself this offseason to some weights or have someone smack him in the face as his 2 biggest hits of the season were the ones right after prust broke his jaw which was kind of amazing when you think about it.

 

Interesting ...Jeff Carter 5.27 per year...I think Carter is a lot better than Brassard..
he should be slotted behind Carter by 1 million IMO. Open market or not.
This is why the owners are assholes when they shut the league down saying its the players being greedy. Look at the market, Carter has proven over his career to be a goal scorer why is Brass getting anything near Carter....uggh

 

Yeah, fair point Al. You can find players both ways. Not sure it is fair to use Carter's deal which was signed under a different CBA which allowed very long deals and huge differences in salary from one year to the next, but even with that being said there are good deals and bad deals.

All I feel pretty confident in saying is under today's rules and today's CBA I have very little doubt Brass would get 5 mill per, if not more, and at the very least would get very close to 5 mill per even if you didn't agree he would get more. What is very fair to me is if someone says yeah he would get that as a UFA next summer, but let another team give it to him...not the Rangers. That is a very fair stance to have. I do not think it is very accurate or fair to act as if his deal is not a fair one based on the current landscape of the NHL, but again that is my opinion.

But if someone said pass on Brass at 4.5 to 5.5, which is what he is worth in today's NHL, I would be totally cool with that. Then we'd have to sign a big C next summer to replace Brass, which is cool.

 

I agree mel. I think with those lines we'd be really tough to defend. The 3rd line, can 1 or 2 kids play well, and will Nash be Nash are the big questions for the team next season. We get good answers and we'll be real good.

 

Brassard allows you to use him either at the #2/3 going forward, so if needed they could deal Stepan and then sign a true top C in FA. If Brassard was simply an average #3 I might sign it was a bit of an overpayment. He has the ability to at least be a decent second C. If Lindberg and Miller(who I think is actually better suited to W)progress as hoped then you have your bottom six C's.