Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Draw of the District

Is anyone else going absolutely crazy today?

This is always the worst part, be it the trade deadline or draft day or the opening of the free agency period - the day before. The hours go by so slowly it's almost as though the clock is mocking me. Stories trickle in of another handful of potential unrestricted free agents now locked up by their team...or another player once perched on the cusp who has decided to test the open market.

The worst thing about this final day is the rumors, the guessing games; one "expert" saying one thing, another "expert" saying the complete opposite. If you listen to these pundits, eventually you would assume that every single player is signing with every single team. That's one way to go completely insane.

I'll be honest, despite my impatience for tomorrow to get here already, I'm not sure how optimistic I am that anything will actually happen...at least not involving the Caps. Here in DC we're in an odd situation of having a lot of money to spend yet not being an organization that traditionally draws the big names.

What's more, as I've said before and as many others have pointed out, free agency isn't always the best route to go down for a rebuilding team. Does it pay to lock up a big name for big bucks in a big fat long-term contract, especially with a crop of young talent that will, oddly enough, want to be paid more down the road? For that matter, with the prices already set so high, are any of the available players even worth the price for which they are likely to go?

I guess I'm just interested to see what Caps' general manager George McPhee (or GMGM as he's known in these parts) will do, whether it is to dip into the pool of free agents or try his luck on the trade market. And if anyone else has heard the rumor of a pending 9-year extension for a certain Russian superstar, there are understandably some other questions whirling around as well.

18 hours and counting...

4 comments:

Isleschick said...

I'm going crazy since right now we have 2 goalies, 4 dmen and 2 lines of 4th liners. ;) I'm kind of excited and kind of scared to see how this turns out.

Bethany said...

I am going absolutely going crazy updating spector and kukla like every 5 minutes while watching the OC...yeah I am awesome.

Steph said...

I actually somehow thought today was Sunday right up until about 5 pm. I was out the whole afternoon so I spent the whole time freaking out that I was missing somme insanely important life-altering trade/signing/etc.

Then my friend was like "so Monday you want to ____?" and I was like ".......tomorrow?" "No, MONDAY." "oh...wait...OH!"

Unknown said...

For that matter, with the prices already set so high, are any of the available players even worth the price for which they are likely to go?

No, they really don't seem to be. For all the talk about the money, and all the angst in a certain city in Western New York, this is a surprisingly weak crop of free agents. None of these guys really seem to be as close to being "top tier" as the dollar amounts people are talking about would suggest.