Antti Niemi heads to San Jose to sign up with the Sharks
Antti Niemi, it seems has found a home in San Jose. The goaltender had what could be described as nothing short of a perfect rookie year culminating with a Stanley Cup win. Coming out of that season and ending up jobless must have been most unexpected, but that’s what happened to Niemi.
Niemi filed for Salary arbitration because he deserved it and the arbitrators saw it too. He was awarded a $2.75 million dollar contract that the Blackhawks opted to walk away from leaving Niemi an unrestricted free agent. Niemi’s case was one of those rare ones where both sides want the same thing but neither side can get it. Niemi wasn’t being greedy, his salary was just peanuts compared to what other goaltenders were getting. Salary Arbitration was the right move for Niemi. The Blackhawks too weren’t being stingy. They wanted to keep Niemi but they just couldn’t. There was no cap room so they let him go. No hard feelings.
But it seems the Sharks, have offered Niemi a $2 million one year deal. Although it represents a $750,000 pay cut from what arbitrators awarded him but Niemi is likely to accept the deal. It is not the year of the goaltenders and Niemi is actually to blame for it. Niemi was a rookie backup for the Blackhawks but as the season progressed and Cristobal Huet continuously struggled to defend the net and Niemi started getting more ice time.
His numbers weren’t stunning. In fact his numbers were no better than exiting San Jose Goalie, Evgeni Nabokov, that too with one of the best defensive line ups in all of the NHL. Nabokov had to work with the arguably weaker San Jose defence. Niemi’s Stanley Cup run with the Blackhawks didn’t prove that Niemi was an extraordinary goalie but that highly skilled and paid goaltenders were less important than a solid defence.
So Niemi effectively shot himself in the foot. Proving that a rookie with just decent statistics was good all that a team needs meant that Niemi would have to settle for a lot less than what a high end goalie would have made a few years ago.
San Jose realized that and decided not to keep Nabokov. They are still spending about as much on goaltending as it was, before this offseason. But it’s not right to just compare the two goaltenders statistics. The Sharks have always had a bit of a problem with their net. Nabokov for all his brilliance didn’t quite deliver in the more crucial stages. Niemi just survived the most psychologically gruelling ordeal for a NHL goalie. He has shown that he can perform under pressure and in the big games and if he can’t, the Sharks still have Antero Niittymaki.
The Sharks had expressed a strong desire to boast their defence. They did try with another Blackhawk, defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson.
There is another very interesting idea floating around. The idea that when the Sharks offered Blackhawks defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson $14 million dollars, they were looking for more than just the defenseman. The Blackhawks had made trades before free agency began to make room for the remainder of their roster. The general impression was that they did have enough room until they suddenly had to bump up Hjalmarsson’s Salary because of the Sharks. That pay raise was exactly the reason why the Hawks were later unable to fit Niemi in. They Hawks had to pick between Hjalmarsson and Niemi and they picked the defenseman leaving the goaltender wide open for pickings.
This was undoubtedly one of the cleverest moves in this offseason. The Sharks couldn’t lose. Their victory is now Niemi instead of Hjalmarsson. Doug Wilson played his cards absolutely brilliantly and took Niemi off the Blackhawks hands for no more than what Niemi had earlier turned down. Doug wins this round
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