Joseph heading to Wings' AHL club
How stupid is this? The Detroit Red Wings have a goaltender making $8 million a year, and he's playing for their minor-league affiliate? And people wonder why the National Hockey League is such a f****d-up mess....
DETROIT -- Red Wings goaltender Curtis Joseph is headed back to the minors.
Joseph cleared waivers Friday and has been assigned to the Grand Rapids Griffins, Detroit's AHL affiliate.
When Dominik Hasek ended his retirement in July, the Red Wings tried to trade Joseph. So far, no team has wanted to take the rest of his two-year, $16 million contract.
The Red Wings have played this season with Hasek, Joseph and Manny Legace, one of the league's top backup goalies.
Joseph signed with Detroit before the 2002-03 season to improve his chances of winning his first Stanley Cup after playing 13 seasons with St. Louis, Edmonton and Toronto.
He had a 2.08 goals-against average in the first round of the playoffs when the Red Wings were eliminated by Anaheim. That followed an inconsistent regular season in which Joseph won 15 of his last 19 regular-season games to finish 34-19-6.
I would imagine that Joseph's salary alone is probably several times more than the entire Grand Rapids roster. This silliness has GOT to stop, or else the NHL is destined to go the way of the buffalo. Owners cannot continue to whine about the cost of doing business when they themselves are the ones committing themselves to pay obsence salaries to middling talents. You cannot credibly threaten to lock players out before next season when YOU are the ones responsible for the ridiculous sums of money being thrown at middling talents.
The owners are the ones who have set the market rates. To correct the problem, all they have to do is to say "NO!"- no to paying minor league goaltenders $8 million a year, no to engaging in bidding wars for third-tier defensemen with questionable skills, no to refusing to run hockey like the business it is. Players are not blameless, but they are not the ones signing the checks. They are certainly the ones reaping the financial windfalls to be had in a business model that just does not work.
Unless the owners can manage to pull their collective anterior out of their collective posterior, the NHL is destined to go the way of the World Hockey Association and the International Hockey League. Live within your means, gentleman, or be prepared to expire from your own fiscal irresponsibility. You can't say that you weren't warned.
