The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

I think any NHL team would love to have a Brad Richards on their team. But at the price tag the Tampa Bay Lightning agreed to, $7.8M a year for five years, it makes you wonder if anyone learned anything from the NHL lockout.

Richards is now the 2nd highest paid player in the league, second only to Jaromir Jagr. And really the only reason why Jagr is making more is that his contract was signed prior to the rules regarding team spending. Maybe, because Jagr signed his contract in the pre-cap era, you can now consider Richards the highest paid player in the NHL. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Each team's salary cap was $39M for this year. Richards' contract combined with teammates Martin St Louis and Vincent Lecavalier will now eat up a total of $20M of cap room. FOR THREE PLAYERS! How on earth can they make any room to sign any other quality talent? And what if Richards doesn't perform to standards? What team would agree to acquire him in a trade, or maybe just claim off waivers, with that huge price tag attached to him?

I can only think that the Lightning might be considering dumping Martin St. Louis when they made this deal with Richards. Sure, these guys brought you a Stanley Cup in 2004, but this year they were bounced from the first round of the playoffs and Richards didn't even crack the top 10 in scoring. If you're paid like you are the top forward in the league, that's a minimum requirement in my books.

Well, I should end by saying congratulations to Brad Richards. Hey, no one pointed a gun to the collectived head of Tampa Bay to offer the contract they did. I would have signed it, too.