Flames Keep Hurting Themselves With No-Trade Clauses
How does a general manager improve his hockey team when half his players can’t be traded? I guess we’ll find out.
As The Calgary Flames removed the ‘interim’ tag from Jay Feaster’s GM title last Monday, his first move was to hand out yet another no-movement clause. This time, the recipient was Curtis Glencross, along with a four-year $10.2 million dollar deal.
To be fair, Glencross with out question earned his money. But since when do you dish no-movement clauses to 43-point, blue-collar guys?
The Flames have more players under contract with no-trade or no-movement clauses than any other NHL team. Add Glencross to the list and they’ve got 11. That’s enough to put together a separate team in itself.
Players with no-movement clauses include: Jarome Iginla, Olli Jokinen, Miikka Kiprusoff, Daymond Langkow, Robyn Regehr, Cory Sarich and Curtis Glencross.
Rene Bourque, Jay Bouwmeester, Ales Kotalik (amazingly!) and Matt Stajan all have no-trade clauses. The only difference between the two is that with a no-movement clause, the team needs the player’s consent before being waived or sent to the minors as well as being traded.
Either way, we’re looking at two handfuls of Flames players who have complete leverage over the team heading into the offseason. Not a great situation for a new GM to start his official tenure.
Perhaps he’ll find the right team and convince Regehr or Kiprusoff, or both, to go there. Moving those two alone would free up nearly $10 million in cap-space.
Since Feaster’s not making it very easy to move money around for now anyway, I would count on the 2011-12 Flames to look a lot like last season’s version.
The salary cap is expected to rise to around $63 million next season, but the Flames are slated to have close to $55 million guaranteed to a dozen guys. Not to mention, they are actively in talks with Alex Tanguy to re-sign him, I’m guessing with some sort of no-movement clause.
Since Kotalik likely won’t return from the minors anytime soon, the Flames will get out of paying him $3 million. They could move Niklas Hagman, who surprisingly doesn’t have a no-trade clause, but other than that, their hands look to be tied.
Whether or not Feaster’s intentions are to blow-up the team and rebuild from scratch remain to be seen. If those are his intentions, he may have to wait a couple years for a few contracts to expire before anything changes. Maybe he’ll find a Stanley Cup caliber team he can ship a couple of the “un-movables” to, and they’ll agree to go there.
As far as I’m concerned, in the last few years, the Flames have made their bed and now they’ll have to sleep in it. Maybe just think before handing out anymore no-trade clauses from here on out.