5 BOROUGH SPORTS

Brad Richards is a stud...but will he be for nine years?

Since there won’t be any big news for the Islanders until the county vote on August 1st (with the exception of the Marty Reasoner signing), I figured it wouldn’t hurt to talk some Rangers off-season. So if you hockey fans haven’t heard, the Rangers made a big move on Saturday signing top free-agent center Brad Richards. Obviously on paper this looks fantastic for the Blue Shirts. He’s going to give Marian Gaborik some much needed help. When healthy, Richards should give the Rangers a solid 85 points per season. There is one key problem with this signing: Richards is 31 years old…and the Rangers gave him a nine-year contract. Glen Sather doesn’t have a good resume in New York when signing or trading for superstars (Bobby Holik, Pavel Bure, Eric Lindros, Wade Redden). Hopefully for the Rangers, Richards can have a Jagr-like career as a Blue Shirt and put together a good three or four years.

As an Islanders fan and having experienced the whole Rick DiPietro 15-year contract debocle, I am opposed to any NHL contract that lasts over a half a decade. In a game where one hit could end someone’s career, it’s stupid for any franchise to give out these kind of deals. I’m pretty sure Sather wasn’t happy to offer Richards a nine-year deal, but he had no choice. Just look around the league. Every top notch player has been signing deals close to a decade long (Marian Hossa, Alex Ovechkin, Mike Richards, Vincent Lecavalier, Niklas Backstrom). It’s the new style of the league. So overall, the Rangers should be happy to have a guy like Richards on their front line, but this long-term contract can ultimately become another free agent disaster.

This entry was posted on July 5, 2011 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Rangers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.