Ted Leonsis has a great blog post today pointing out, as I did a couple days ago, that he's been very honest about the amount of change he wanted to make with this team.
He also throws in a quick dig against Boyd Gordon. "Real winners," writes the Caps and Wizards owner, "want to compete for a Cup; and aren’t afraid to play on a team that is deep with talent."
Gordon saw that Jeff Halpern, a better player and a hometown kid from Bethesda, had signed with the Caps to compete for his traditional fourth line center spot on what is arguably the deepest Caps roster in history and one of the best clubs in the league. Instead of calling the team and offering to take a pay cut to stay in this exciting hockey town like elite goaltender Tomas Vokoun did the very next day, Boyd Gordon got himself a cost of living increase over his already inflated millionaire salary by going to play in Phoenix for two years.
The Phoenix Coyotes filed for bankruptcy little while ago and went up for sale. After nobody would buy them, the NHL took over their ownership and appointed a not-very-good general manager to gradually trade all their good players away to teams that people care about and watch in indifference as their key free agents left for teams like Florida that are also terrible, but trying credibly to improve. The Coyotes almost moved to Winnipeg this summer before the Atlanta Thrashers did. Boyd Gordon showed with this contract that he is not terribly worried about winning the Stanley Cup.
Sometimes players leave a good team because they've never gotten a chance to play big minutes on a depleted team and show their skills. Then they can come back to a good team later and earn what they're worth. However, Boyd Gordon has been with the Caps since before they gave up on being a good team and decided to rebuild. When the Caps were rebuilding and their best center was Dainius Zubrus (a man who had never played center before and is now a third line wing win the middling New Jersey Devils) Gordon, a first round draft pick, shuttled back and forth between the NHL and the minors. Perhaps he went to Phoenix because, after all the good Caps teams he's been a part of, he knows there are no guarantees in hockey, but there are guaranteed contracts for players with decent resumes who don't mind if their team is built to lose.
I already wrote yesterday about how misguided Steve Whyno is to write in the Washington Times about how much Gordon gave the Capitals and express doubt over whether Halpern can do better. I've already broken down the statistics and shown how, in a comparable number of playoff games, Halpern has scored seven times as many playoff goals. Heck, Gordon has never scored more than seven goals in an eighty-two game regular season. Halpern typically doubles or triples that output. I'd like to point out again that Jeff Halpern, a man from Bethesda who grew up cheering for the Capitals and always wanted to play for this team, came in at a lower salary than Boyd Gordon, who has just shown himself to be a money-chasing, happy-go-lucky loser who can't tell the difference between a bit part on a cup contender and two years wandering in the desert.
Now, don't get me wrong. If I could get one point three million dollars a year to go work for a failed company in Phoenix, I would. But that's why I'm stuck writing about hockey, and not chasing its holy grail. We don't cheer for players because they're exactly like us. We cheer for players like Jeff Halpern who start out like us and then try every day to be better.
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