1 Year contract, 7.45M deal with the Stanley Cup winning rival Detroit Red Wings.
Damn, that's cold...
Marian Hossa has pretty much told the Pens that they are not an organization that he would like to play for and that they have virtually no chance of winning the Stanley Cup in the near future.
He has foregone any long term security and similar money.
That is extremely rare in the sport. That not only says that I want desperately to win the Cup but it also speaks to an unexpressed opinion that there is something about the Pens franchise that Hossa thinks will keep the Pens from winning the cup over the next 5 years (the duration, I think the Pens offered).
Is it the coach, the management...Crosby the diver??? Did Malkin screw Hossa's wife? Who knows? One thing I do know is that we won't hear anything from Hossa's mouth about it. But, it has to be something big.
If I'm a Penguins fan, I am pissed off and feel pissed on.
What Hossa did speaks volumes for where he thinks the Pittsburgh franchise is going...ouch! I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Hossa will receive 10 times worse treatment than Jagr ever received in his post-Pens career.
2 comments:
Why should Penguin fans (like me) care about one person's (unstated) opinion about the future of the franchise? Who says Marian Hossa has more hockey wisdom than Shero, Therrien, etc., etc.? I don't feel "jilted", and I'm not going to let one person's action (people are reading a lot into his actions, all he did was sign a one-year contract with another team, not put on a "Pittsburgh Sucks" T-shirt) cause me to second-guess the decisions that Shero makes.
Signing a one-year contract at this stage of his career is just flat-out strange. The unusuallness of it is leading to speculation for the motivation, but I'll take Hossa at his word and not labor to assign layers of meaning to Hossa's actions.
I agree with your first paragraph, Pens fans shouldn't give a shit about what Hossa thinks. Personally, I think it was a mistake to even consider signing him to a long term 7M deal. He's not the player the Pens really need for next year. They've already got two pure scorers in Crosby and Malkin that make 8.7M apiece. Signing Hossa would have tied up almost 25M long term in three forwards. That's just plain irresponsible in today's NHL.
As for your second paragraph, I totally disagree. If you sign a one year deal (turning down a 35M deal from a cup finalist to go to the cup winner) and give up all those years of security, there must have been something he sees on the Pens that makes him think that the team can't make the jump to the next level.
Of course he won't verbalize it, but I wouldn't have minded being a fly on the wall when he had that discussion with his agent (who probably thinks he was nuts for not taking 90M in Edmonton as well). But, I'm sure there were reasons, that's all I'm saying. I would just love to know what they were. Call it curiosity.
If I was a Pens fan, I'd be dying to know.
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