First: the news about the NHL gambling story is still more important at this point. (But, goodchristalmighty, we need to think about something else for a minute!)

Second: our headline *might* be an exaggeration. But don’t bet on it.

Earlier today we utterly ignorned the action in San Jose in favour of that sexy little gambling story (*and we ignored other notable things as well.)

But that Sharks story deserves attention: San Jose has signed Evgeni Nabokov to the most ridiculously stupid contract the New NHL could conceive: a mega-bucks lockdown contract till the next decade.

TSN says: (*thanks Canucks blog for the link)

Nabokov, who could have become an unrestricted free agent after the season, will make $5 million in each of the next two years, $5.5 million in 2008-09 and $6 million in 2009-10.

That’s a contract that beats out Martin Brodeur’s, for pete’s sake - and for a player that’s been sat out for many unexplainable reasons this season. We were actually stupid enough to think that the Sharks were inclined to go with their well-priced and snazzy backups, and drop Nabokov alltogether. (Some hockey analysts we are.)

Postscript#1: Sometime in the next year or two, some reader stumbling across this post must remind us how this contract is going. Meanwhile, here’s his stats as of today, in case that’s what you’re after:

Postscript #2: It’s not that we don’t think the Sharks should’ve signed Nabby, but why SO MUCH MONEY??

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UPDATE: Chuqui and Laurie at Teal Sunglasses disagree. Says they:

it’s far from the worst contract. I mean, Patrick Lalime? Nikolai? Or, as I sat to Laurie every time I watch Anaheim play and Keith $2m/year Carney take an old/slow hooking call….. “isn’t this the time when I say ‘why is he still in the league?’”

What do you think Luongo thinks he’s going to make when he leaves Florida? He’s turned down similar money; is he really THAT much better? (or is his turndown because Luongo is factoring in the ‘how much do you have to pay me to play for Keenan’ factor?)

No, Roberto Luongo isn’t that much better than Nabokov… but neither is Vesa Toskala that much worse than Nabokov. I mean, is Toskala really about $3 million worse than the Sharks’ #1? Tossing off Toskala for Nabokov is a perfectly fair judgement call for the GM to make. But in the “new NHL” world of salary caps, signing a goalie who doesn’t have a Stanley Cup ring for over $5 million per - with a long-term contract - is one hell of a bet to place.

It just seems to us that San Jose was in a position to negotiate a better contract than that. Locking in on a goalie long-term for money like that doesn’t seem terribly clever.

(That being said, Vancouver’s history with goalies and their contracts is a laughable disaster, so what the hell do we know???)

;-)

tags: nhl, hockey, san+jose+sharks, evengi, nabokov, contract, salary