Chris Pronger? Once again, my team has decided to bring on another aging All Star whose expiration date is nearing: Hatcher, Forsberg, Hackett and Nedved quickly come to mind.
My personal guess is this is what was racing through GM Holmgren’s mind: Philly wouldn’t get squat in the first round of a mediocre draft and then the salary cap only got raised by $100,000. Philly’s chances in the upcoming Jay Bouwmeister Derby evaporated right there. So now we’ve taken the (alleged) Casanova of Edmonton to fill the defensive holes we’ve had since Desjardins and Johnnson were shown the door.
This did send my Detroit-fan friend to write me a tirade which included insulting Obama. I oddly replied calmly and (hopefully) thoughtfully back that we should relax. Like Emery, Pronger only has one year remaining on his contract. If he doesn’t produce, he will be a free agent looking for a new team. Plus he needs to prove he’s good because Philly fans are very fickle, they practically helped Forsberg pack his bags when Holmgren dealt him to Nashville. I had to remind him about Detroit’s lack of class when they took Todd “Attempted Murderer” Bertuzzi off Florida’s hands in a failed run for the Cup in 2007.
I guess this makes me a poor fan by not getting my blood up too high on this and politely seeing a silver lining (his brief tenure). I mean, I’m not pleased with this acquisition. Pronger is a tough, dirty player, even by NHL standards. Yet he’s a good D-man who helped Edmonton and Anaheim go the Cup. The last thing I want to see though, is Pronger crushing Cindy Crosby’s nose with his elbow. The Penguins are a bunch crybabies but I don’t want to see anyone seriously injured, including hated rivals.
Bringing in aging former heroes like this is often the sign not just of a poor draft, but also of a poorly stocked minor league system. In baseball, the Astros did this last year and again this year, after they’d gutted their farm system in 2007. So they tried to make up for it by bringing in some questionable veterans to keep things competitive.
The list of mediocre has-beens brought in by the Astros in the last two years starts to get distressing when you actually list them… Sadly, you could field a starting lineup and still have fair number of subs just from this list alone…
Miguel Tejada
Geoff Blum
Kaz Matsui
Ty Wigginton
Darin Erstad
Mark Loretta
Jose Cruz Jr (sigh)
Shawn Chacon (who infamously didn’t last long after literally CHOKING THE GM in the locker room)
Jason Michaels (who’s a never-was, not a has-been!)
Jason Smith (double WTF!)
Mike Hampton
Brian Moehler
and Jose Valverde….