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03/10/2009 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - This year was supposed to be one of celebration for the Montreal Canadiens franchise. Instead, the Habs' 100th season has been one filled with disappointments, the latest coming in the form of a head coach firing.
Guy Carbonneau was relieved of his coaching duties on Monday with just 16 regular season games left for Montreal. It seems like a harsh move considering the Canadiens were the fifth seed in the East at the time of the firing, but Montreal has a tenuous hold on that spot at best, thanks to the conference's tight race for the playoffs.
Carbonneau's Canadiens were just one year removed from a first-place finish in the conference during the 2007-08 season before suffering a disappointing five-game series loss to Philadelphia in the second round. He was also last year's runner-up for the Jack Adams Trophy, which is given annually to the league's best coach.
General manager Bob Gainey, a friend and former teammate of Carbonneau's in Montreal, made the decision to change coaches and, not surprisingly, he chose himself to handle bench duties for the remainder of the season. This marks the second time in Gainey's nearly six years as Montreal GM that he has fired a coach and taken over on an interim basis.
The last time Gainey used this strategy was in the middle of the 2005-06 campaign when he fired Claude Julien. Interestingly enough, Julien, who is currently enjoying immense success as head coach of the Eastern Conference- leading Boston Bruins, was also replaced by another GM a year later when Devils front office whiz Lou Lamoriello fired him and became the interim head coach.
Gainey is just one of many general managers with too much power and not enough accountability. Certainly, he had cause for firing Carbonneau, but the main reasons for Montreal's struggles this year can be traced back to moves the GM made.
First and foremost, it was Gainey's idea to anoint Carey Price as his team's No. 1 goaltender at the not-yet-ripe age of 20 years old, when he traded the club's former top goaltender Cristobal Huet at the 2007-08 deadline. The Habs would have lost Huet to free agency after the season anyway, but the move had a whiff of arrogance since Montreal was the No. 1 seed in the East at the time of the trade and Huet had been a big reason for Montreal's success up to that point.
Price went on to struggle in his first NHL postseason, going 5-6 with a 2.78 GAA and .901 save percentage. The rookie goaltender appeared lost at times, specifically in the series against Philadelphia when he let up a handful of soft goals. Price's growing pains have continued into this season, and Montreal has increasingly turned to Jaroslav Halak as the starting goaltender.
Not to say that Price won't at some point be a great goaltender for Montreal, but Gainey certainly made a blunder in deciding the young netminder's time was now.
Another problem for the Habs this year has been the decreased production of Alex Kovalev, who had a career renaissance with an 84-point season a year ago only to have just 47 points through 64 games this year. Kovalev's lack of scoring became such an issue that Gainey decided to order his star player to stay home in Montreal while his team was out on the road playing the final two games of a road trip.
To say that this scenario was predictable would be an understatement, considering Kovalev's history of taking years off. Of course, the 2007-08 campaign happened to be the final year of the Russian winger's contract. After Gainey opted to sign Kovalev, who is now 36 years of age, to a three-year, $13.5 million deal.
To be fair to Gainey, allowing Kovalev to walk to another team would have been an extremely unpopular decision in Montreal, where the hockey-crazed fan base refers to Kovalev as L'Artiste (The Artist) due to his world-class stickhandling skills.
Still, Gainey's job is to make difficult decisions such as allowing a beloved player to test free agency if it is the best plan for a team's future.
This is still not enough to excuse Carbonneau for his erratic approach to coaching this season. The former Canadiens captain shuffled his lines so frequently that his players couldn't have helped but feel confused. Also, The constant reordering invariably caused some players to suffer a loss of confidence in their own play.
Essentially, what Gainey is out to prove is that the players he has accumulated in service of the Canadiens are better than Carbonneau has made them look this season. That is ultimately the best way Gainey can prove he still deserves to be the general manager of the most storied franchise in NHL history.
Gainey had a telling moment Monday at the press conference to announce the coaching change. He said, "I can't say there could be anybody who follows our team who hasn't had this [firing] in their mind at some point in the last month."
That's true, in a town where hockey is king, Carbonneau's demise was likely predicted by many folks. In the end, however, the decision was made by Gainey, and now that he's added the title of head coach to his resume once again, it's he who bears the burden of proof in making the case for his own job.
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In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.
And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.
Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.
So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.
Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)
The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.
As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.
The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.
In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.
Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.
And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.
So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.
There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.
So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.
And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.
There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)
Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.
Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.
Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.
So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.
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