the blueline report

THE BLUELINE REPORT Who’s at fault for the NHL lockout is a pointless discussion. Both sides deserve the same amount of blame for not finding any common ground on the core economic issues. Leading up to the lockout, though, a number of players and owners were winners in the past 72 to 48 hours as an interesting dynamic is how the uncertainty of the CBA led to so many long-term signings of restricted free agents and players with one year left on their contract in the final hours before the CBA expired on Sunday morning at 12:01 a.m. What we saw here was some teams getting good bargains on long-term deals for core players like in Washington with John Carlson signing a 6 year, $23.8 million contract and a number of players making out very well with long-term security from the likes of Evander Kane and Kari Lehtonen. The uncertaintyRead More »

THE BLUELINE REPORT The revelation this week that the Buffalo Sabres are indeed the team that has offered Shane Doan a massive four year, $30 million contract is not a surprise at all to those following the situation closely, as it’s been widely believed for weeks that the Sabres were the team with the insane offer to the soon to be 36 year old. The offer was made in mid July, so it’s not like the offer is suddenly a game changer in the Doan situation but looking at the bigger picture, the ridiculous offer put forth by Sabres management is another example that having a rich owner in Terry Pegula who is willing to spend big bucks, doesn’t mean Sabres management has learned to spend wisely after being cautious spenders in the past. Pegula is great for the organization and has given the Sabres fan base a sense ofRead More »