Goodbye Drury and Briere
Danny Briere’s agent announced what everyone was bracing for. That being that Briere is going into free agency. With free agency right around the corner it is time to say goodbye to the captains.
Both of them will receive over six million dollars a year. Something that most fans cannot justify the Buffalo Sabres spending. Especially, with Tim Connolly coming back fully healthy, and Drew Stafford proving that he belongs on the club.
The unfortunate thing is that both should still be here. Darcy Regier dropped the ball on this one. Briere was looking for the five years 25 million dollars last year. Also, Drury was marked a bery important player to the Sabres. Still, they waited to the last second to try and sign him.
Fans should be upset with the Sabres. The two players that people love the most will be gone thanks to procrastination. However, I have the benefit of looking at this through a business owners eyes. Since, I own my own cleaning business.
One of the things that owners do is look down the road. In other words predict and forecast what things should be. The Sabres did this very poorly. However, they cannot afford to give the kind o years that both men are asking for.
All business owners do not like to put so much payroll into very few people. The fact being that the league is regresssing back to pre lockout days makes Briere useless to the Sabres. Which, with one bad contract, can mess up your payroll for years.
For example, lets say you sign Briere to a six year 36 million dollar deal, and then have to cut him after four years. Here is how the CBA works. The Sabres would owe Briere one third of the remaining money. Which is four million, since 12 million remained.
Then would have to count that against the cap this way. The four million would get spread out double the number of years remaining on the deal. Since there was two years remaining the four million would be spread out over four years. Which would mean one million in dead cap money for the next four years.
So, does it really make sense at all to even sign players to long ter huge contracts. HELL NO IT DOES NOT!!!!!! The Sabres are on a tight budget since they cannoy reaise ticket prices at will to gain more revenue.
With the cap out of control and CBA proving that it is a crappy document the Sabres hands are tied. They cannot lose money for it means bankruptcy again, and that might mean the end of the Sabres. So pick your poison people.