Yesterday, the Bruins announced that they signed forward Milan Lucic to a three year, $18M contract extension. Lucic's stats for the past three seasons:
That's just the regular season. It's impossible to find his playoff stats because, well, I'm still not sure if he even played in the playoffs the past two or three years.
Regardless, Lucic's signing marks the end of the Bruins' pre-lockout to-do list. Most fans don't remember this, but after the 2004 lockout, the team let most, if not all, of its core players walk and completely decimated the roster. However, Peter Chiarelli is a damn good GM and is making sure his core players don't hit the open market, signing Daniel Paille, Chris Kelly, Greg Campbell, Tuukka Rask, Brad Marchand, Malcolm Subban, Tyler Seguin, and now Milan Lucic to new contracts (entry level contract in the case of Subban).
What this signing does is guarantee that Ryan Miller will whine and complain about getting hit for at least three more years. Because standing in the path of 228 pound train in the middle of the circle isn't your fault, apparently.
After Miller stuck around after that game to call Lucic "a piece of shit", I'm sure Lucic can only laugh to himself about how much of a piss pot he is. Not to mention he'll be sure to blow him a few kisses during warm ups.
In other news, the NHL lockout was officially put into effect yesterday. While the owners sat around complaining about how much money the players make, they were dishing out massive contracts like the Lucic deal at the last second to wrap up all their necessary business.
I can't get past the fact that both sides refuse to compromise and come up with a new deal. It's become very apparent that the main issue in negotiations is revenue sharing, and I don't understand what different it makes to either both sides. The total revenue the league makes is no doubt in the range of tens of billions of dollars, and whether one side gets 55% or 45%, they're still making more money than many people could ever dream of making. To think that all of this bitching is about who gets a little bit more of the share is mind boggling.
The other thing that blows my mind is that this is now the third lockout in the tenure of league commissioner Gary Bettman. Why this man still has his job is beyond me. As commissioner, your job is "protecting the integrity of the game of professional hockey and preserving public confidence in the League". When you have three lockouts in your tenure as commissioner, one that resulted in a 48 game schedule, one that resulted in an entire season lost, and another one that has yet to be resolved, you're clearly not protecting the integrity of the league. And it's very clear with all the fan unrest that public confidence in the league is in the toilet right now. To compare this to a real life situation, it's like a business employee hanging up on a customer or a mailman throwing away mail instead of delivering it. Both situations would result in immediate termination, but somehow Count Bettman has turned the owners and the Board of Governors into his evil little minions and they will not remove him from his position.
While the players stated already that they were and are willing to play without a CBA, the owners ruled unanimously in favor of a lockout yesterday. With any luck, everyone will pull their heads out of their asses and get a deal done so people don't go insane without hockey and star players don't go to Europe and get killed. The two sides will continue negotiations soon, and hopefully there will be a full season and not a full cancellation.
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