- ON VACATION _
Yes, I'm still on vacation ... but this is just too good to pass up ...
Edmonton general manager Kevin Lowe has lost his mind. I want to see 5 general managers in hockey who think his five-year, $21.5 million contract makes financial sense.
And please, Oilers fans, spare me the comparisons to Flyers' GM Paul Holmgren offering Scott Hartnell a long-term deal averaging $4.2 million. Hartnell was making $1.75 million already. Not the league minimum.
Penner was making just $450,000. Now he's going to average $4 million and change.
That's worse than Bob Clarke giving Nolan Baumgartner $1.2 million last summer based on all mostly AHL career performance and Clarke's mistaken belief that he was a puck-skating defenseman, something Baumgartner later admitted he had never been accused of.
Lowe's gesture here smacks as desperation in his market. Desperate to please the fans, desperate to fill the seats, desperate to make the playoffs after going from Stanley Cup finalist to Slightly Better Tahn Philadelphia in one season.
I realize it's hard to get players to go to Edmonton, but overpaying them to such an extreme is simply bad hockey business.
I support the use of Group II offers but this offer is outrageously bad. This is Voodoo Economics. Isn't this the kind of signing that the small market club vowed was a contributor to the lockout?
I agree with Anaheim GM Brian Burke. I don't like the way Burke embarrassed Lowe, but Burkey has an Irish temper and the thing about him is, he is true to his character, whether angry, happy or sad.
"We do not believe these salaries make sense," Burke told Canadian Press. "If I think they don't make sense and I match them then I'm just as dumb as the team that extended the offer."
Lowe's reaction:
"Restricted free agent offers were another part of our planning process all along," he told the wire service. "Based on the reaction of some of the managers and some of the people in hockey, (it was) a very unpopular route.
"From our perspective, it was a very necessary one to improve our hockey club."
No Kevin, it doesn't. It's bad business in a small market, in a large market, in a grocery market!
That's my vacation rant.
I expect all of Alberta to hop on a plane and visit me in the Somerton section of Philly tomorrow night.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger • 
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