herb wrote:We'll see what Ballard gets offered when he's a UFA. I bet he'll get paid less than Aaron Rome.
In fairness, I think the lesser buyouts are going to have even greater deflationary pressure on their subsequent contracts than other fringe players will with the cap going down - the salary on their next deal may not be a reflection of teams views of their ability.
Obviously Vinny got himself top six money again and so will Daniel Briere, but guys like Ballard and Komisarek and Shultz will be pressed to take ~$1m deals even if teams think they can be worth more - they'll be getting paid by their former teams and they'll be in a spot where they need to prove they can still play in this league.
I could see Ballard having a role as large as or larger than what Aaron Rome had in Dallas this past year, and while that should not be a feather in his cap it would be more of an indicator of his ability than a one year $800 000 contract would be.
Southern_Canuck wrote:I think 48 hours was the amount of time after the final game of the playoffs that teams had to wait to begin compliance buyouts - and unconditional waivers for purposes of compliance buyout are still just 24 hours. I guess we will see if Ballard is put on unconditional waivers tomorrow.
I haven't seen anything specifically for compliance buyouts, but what I have seen for unconditional waivers is that it's a 48 hour period. Which if true means Ballard must have been waived yesterday (if he's going to get a compliance buy out).
A lot of people somehow have the impression that he was "mishandled" by AV and Bowness which I find mystifying. Ballard just wasn't a defender that they trusted, so they put the players they trust on the ice. When you look at his play, he just didn't cut the mustard at either end of the ice - especially for $4.2M.
Ballard has pretty clearly been a better player than he was in Vancouver, whether he ever finds that again I don't know but early on it was tempting to look for other explanations than "his game just fell off a cliff" because it usually doesn't happen for guys under 30 unless there's some major injury or something along those lines.
But it appears that's what did happen for KB4, I think he was misused in the first season but as time wore on that simply ceased to explain his poor play - ultimately its on a player to persevere and do everything they can to be effective in the role they've been asked to play, and Ballard didn't do that. I don't think he was a great fit here but it's not like the coaching staff asked him to learn to play right a right-handed stick or anything.
Anyway hopefully its onwards and upwards for Ballard but no way would it be worth taking a chance on him at $8.4m over two years.
My NHL comparison was Mike Weaver, but Ballard was paid like a top 30 in the NHL guy. If he had been making only $1.5M, and the Canucks didn't give up a 1st round pick for him, it wouldn't have been so bad to have a mediocre #5-6 defender. But that's not how it was.
S_C
Weaver is actually really effective in his own zone (tremendously effective, given his size) so I don't really agree with the comparison.