One last follow up to the Michael Nylander saga. Confirmed with the Caps that Nylander’s two-week conditioning stint began Wednesday and lasts through Nov. 4. That would give him at most five games in the AHL with Grand Rapids to give European and NHL teams a chance to look at him.
It’s not a good situation – for Nylander or the Caps. But George McPhee knew the risks when he signed Nylander – then 34 – to a four-year contract in July, 2007. Let’s remember the context. At the time, the Caps were coming off a second straight 70-point season. They had missed the playoffs both years after the NHL lockout and had absolutely no one on the roster to play center on the top line with Alex Ovechkin. Washington also had no idea what to expect from rookie Nicklas Backstrom. Planning on a 19-year-old with zero NHL experience to be the No. 1 center seemed like a shaky proposition – even if he was a top prospect. Nylander was a former Cap and had excelled centering Jaromir Jagr for two years with the Rangers. He was an 80-point player in New York for two years.
But the contract hasn’t worked out. That’s pretty obvious. Then again, if McPhee had landed one of the elite free agents from that season – center Scott Gomez signed a huge deal with New York – it wouldn’t have been much better. The Rangers practically threw a party when they got Montreal to take the Gomez deal off their hands over the summer. He is still signed through 2014 at about $7.3 million per year. Yikes! May have a print story on this sometime next week. But free agency is a dangerous, dangerous game in the NHL. Even for the big-market clubs there just isn’t much margin for error if things go wrong. Add in the number of young stars that have been NHL-ready off the bat in recent years and you can see the value of first-round draft picks spiking.
