PHILADELPHIA — If, as now seems the case, the Rangers are willing to go to six years and $36 million in order to keep Ryan Callahan, there’s nothing more within the realm of reason that can be done to entice the captain to remain on Broadway.
If that isn’t enough, it would be Callahan’s choice, and Callahan’s choice alone that he has earned, to seek even greater riches somewhere else when the July 1 free-agent market opens, and more likely than not in Buffalo.
No one should or would begrudge him the chance to play Act II of his career near his Rochester home — or anywhere else, for that matter — if that’s what he and his family feel is best.
That’s the “free” aspect of free agency.
It is not about giving hometown discounts, that much is clear. Owners use their power to lock players out and steer them into a quintuple cap system that pits one athlete against another for the gilded scraps on the table.
It is too much, then, to expect these athletes to accept less than what they believe to be 100 cents on their dollar worth of effort in order to help an individual club’s general manager construct a better team.
Too much in general, and a leap of faith in particular, for a Rangers’ player to leave money on the table for general manager Glen Sather to spend on some other free agent from another organization.
See, it is patently absurd for anyone to argue because Sather lavished excess riches on, oh, take your pick from a cast of thousands — but Val Kamensky, Dave Karpa, Vladimir Malakhov, Scott Gomez and Wade Redden will do as illustrations — that the GM then should routinely “overpay” anyone in the organization coming up for an extension.
It is not, however, foolish for a Blueblood Ranger such as Callahan, or Henrik Lundqvist or Dan Girardi, to wonder why the Garden spigots seem to flow so easily with gold when it comes to signing guys from other teams but the process becomes so difficult when it comes to one of their own.
Look, the rules have changed on the Rangers and other big-market teams that were able to attract players by front-loading contracts. There seems little doubt the Blueshirts would have been able to accommodate Lundqvist and Girardi without nearly as much fuss as it took to complete those deals, and already would have been able to strike an agreement with Callahan, as well, under the old CBA.
By the way, the elimination of front-loading in the new CBA did not exactly level the field as much as it cut the financial legs out from under the league’s cash-register franchises. Clubs that play in states (or cities) with heavy tax burdens are at a dollar-for-dollar disadvantage in bidding for players, and clubs that play in areas with greater costs of living are at a disadvantage, as well.
But resolving those issues weren’t on the NHL’s (or, namely, Brian Burke’s) agenda the last time around, the time before that, or any time, as a matter of fact.
The fact now is the Rangers and Sather are going as far as they can to keep Callahan. The danger isn’t merely the captain will leave, thus creating a hole in both the lineup and the club’s hierarchy, but his decision would leave millions for Sather to spend on someone else from some other place this summer.
So the Sabres are forced to punt again, forced into trading away their most valuable asset in Ryan Miller the way they were forced into trading Dominik Hasek in 2001 when that goaltender, like this one, opted out because he could see no hope of winning in the immediate future.
The Blues were caught napping on Hasek, and somehow allowed him to go to the Red Wings, who won a Cup with him in nets in 2002. Given a virtual do-over, St. Louis wasn’t about to allow this one to get away, although let’s make this clear from the outset: Miller is closer to Jaroslav Halak than he is to Hasek, and will be unless he can deliver the first Cup in franchise history to a Blues team that seems without weakness.
If Phil Esposito feels obligated to talk about me on the radio, perhaps he would like to tell the story about the time he spent an elevator ride in the Garden kicking me in the back of the legs because he was upset with something I had written the previous day.
At least that would be accurate.
At this point, it is fair to say Steve Yzerman isn’t planning on contesting the divorce sought by Martin St. Louis so much as seeking the most favorable terms with which to separate.
Which means the parties may remain married into the summer but no one need save any date for an anniversary celebration next year.