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Is 3 really a Crowd in the Crease? |
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Maybe not.
I have held off voicing my opinion on the DiPietro- Roloson- Biron Tri-fecta for a few days now for a few reasons. First, other items always seemed easier for me to write about and second because I wanted to do a little research before opening a Pandora’s Box that may get my hand slapped.
Here on Long Island, we have heard stories of a handicapped Rick DiPietro for months. During the Thursday evening drive time show on XM 204 radio, Chris Botta explained the sightings as inevitable. The man LIVES here. He is somewhat hard to MISS. If he were holed-up in a cabin in the Lakes region of Minnesota this past year, maybe he would have gotten away with it. However, he didn’t.
How many surgeries did Rick have? I don’t know. How many body parts has he had repaired? Not a clue. Can you call it a “new” surgery if they go back and fix something that is not healing well to begin with? Or is that just semantics?
What I do know is that any human body, no matter how good its shape prior to a surgery, takes a long time to heal from one. Oh, certainly someone can be functional in a short time, but that 100% mark takes a VERY long time to reach. When you are talking about an athlete that needs to be at peak condition, by all logic, that amount of time has to increase exponentially.
In actuality, sitting Rick out for the new season, as was suggested in Newsday, is pointless. He would not benefit from it. He needs to work at reaching his maximum strength and condition and the only way he can achieve that is to play at a pace that will not interfere with his progress.
In other words, three goalies are not too many for the NY Islanders. I tend to agree with the theory that Ricky will only be able to play effectively somewhat more than a handful of games. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the fan base was misled. Rick is not a tomato plant from a Burpee catalog guaranteed to bear fruit in six to eight weeks. He is human and humans heal at different rates. We don’t know how many unforeseen setbacks there were or what actually transpired between patient, doctor and employer. We just don’t know. Nor should we. (Go ask your HR director about that one.)
Okay, so we will hope that Rick IS skating by August as Charles Wang told Mike Francesa on his radio show this week and see where he goes from there. With luck, by the time training camp opens, the shroud of mystery is gone and our “Goalie for Life” will be back to his old self and be the first one on the ice and the last one off it. Maybe he’ll even feel good enough for a few pie-in-the-face laughs. (Should someone warn John Tavares?)
Now let’s talk about his contract. This is what I needed to go back and look up. All this week, I have read comments from posters questioning who was responsible for the 15-year deal and how devastating it would be to the organization should they have to carry it without the benefit of him actually playing.
First off, it looks as if Rick originally discussed the long-term deal with Mike Milbury. Rick wanted to be the Islanders version of Marty Broduer and retire with the club that drafted him. If you think about it, that is actually a noble thing in this business considering how the salaries have increased.
According to reports, the 15-year deal was discussed with then GM Mike Milbury the prior season, but they could not secure insurance for it. Milbury signed Rick to a one-year deal to get him on the ice. The final details of the first long term hockey contract were then worked out by Garth Snow who had taken over after the departure of Neil Smith. This does not mean that it was HIS idea, just HIS negotiation and HIS signature on the dotted line. While the 15-year deal was scoffed at in 2006, extended year deals soon began cropping up in the league.
The contract’s insurance issue may not be as mysterious as everyone thinks. I have one note from my own article for the NYIBC Newsletter dated October of 2006 that says “the contract is insured in five-year rolling increments.”
The contract is guaranteed. However, I found an ESPN article that said if he “formally retires, providing the league with the appropriate papers to that effect, the contract ends and does not count against the Islanders’ salary cap.”
Well, that sounds good. However, if he retires due to INJURY, he will be paid in full. Uh oh. Now do you see why they have to take extra precautions getting this man back on the ice and in the net? As long as he is deemed healthy enough to play, he can actually DECIDE to end his playing career and he will forfeit the remaining portion of the contract.
Now that is not to say that the organization who believed so strongly in this young man wouldn’t keep him around for something else, but it would take away the balance of the contract and its cap hit.
My theory on what went wrong with Rico is a simple one, though not exactly shared by others. I blame it all on the lock out.
What did I say? Yep -- The work stoppage. While the full year off destroyed some older players careers, it didn’t exactly help the development of the younger ones. Rick spent a lot of time in the gym. In my estimation, too much time. When he came back to the Coliseum, he was so muscle-bound; he could hardly put his arms down. He had physically changed. While Buffalo Sabres’ goaltender Ryan Miller was thin and agile, Rick looked like a bouncer for a strip club.
He did trim down somewhat later on, but it’s my opinion that the damage to his joints may have already been done. Again, just my opinion based on the changes I saw in him over time.
So, three IS NOT a crowd when one will spend more time in the press box than he will on the bench. Should all go well and Rick gets back to his (as Brian Burke had called him) “world class goalie” shape, (Uh, huh! Yes he did!) then Garth has a really good goaltender in Marty Biron to dangle in front of any club that may need one due to their own hardships and come away with something HE may need.
Let’s just say that Ricky’s contract isn’t the ONLY thing they took out insurance on. With Biron on board, they took game insurance. Not a bad thing. They just may need a bigger locker room for all that goalie gear.
And... that's my take on Ricki-gate!
New York Islanders Blogger • 
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