Puck Daddy Power Rankings: Mike Richards, bad free-agent deals, NHL buyouts

[Author's note: Power rankings are usually three things: Bad, wrong, and boring. You typically know just as well as the authors which teams won what games against who and what it all means, so our moving the Red Wings up four spots or whatever really doesn't tell you anything you didn't know. Who's hot, who's not, who cares? For this reason, we're doing a power ranking of things that are usually not teams. You'll see what I mean.] 

9. Trading for Zac Rinaldo

Don Sweeney had a bad weekend. No two ways about it. So he's swimming around, looking for a life preserver that will improve his team. Then he promptly grabs the nearest trillion-ton weight and sinks to the bottom of the ocean silently screaming, “Courage!” into a cold, ink-black void.

8. The difference between “bad” and “overrated”

Today is the day when a lot of bad contracts will be signed, but contrary to popular opinion in the hockey world these days, a player with a bad contract is not a bad player.

For example, let's look at the worst contract in the cap era: David Clarkson's. There was no logical way to defend a contract of this type, given to a player like this. Clarkson was and is, at best, a third-line option who happened to have one 30-goal season through one of the biggest offensive flukes in recent memory. Dave Nonis bought as high as humanly possible on him, and it — along with about 16 other mistakes — eventually and rightly cost him his job.

This is not to say that he could never be useful if used effectively (Clarkson 100 percent was not used effectively in Toronto). The odds are that he won't be, and he's never in a million years going to live up to the value of the contract. So now it's “David Clarkson sucks” instead of “David Clarkson is ludicrously overpaid.” The distinction is thin, but it's there.

To some extent you're worth what someone is willing to pay you. To another, no you're not. Because if you, the Average Puck Daddy Reader Whom I Love, were paid $100 as a child to take out the trash once, well, that's a misallocation of resources. Especially if there's like some type of “taking out the garbage” salary cap — which in this scenario there is — and you've historically proven quite bad at taking out the trash except for one time when all the pizza boxes stayed in the can and you didn't spill garbage juice all over the kitchen floor. What I'm saying is your one thing of successful trash removal was a fluke and everyone knows it except your dear ol' mom who thinks her little boy or girl is the best trash taker-outer in the whole wide world.

But if you're, like, pretty okay at taking out the trash, and you get $100, that's still too much. You don't spill stuff on the floor but also once you get out to the curb you accidentally knock another garbage can over and don't pick it up. At that point, you're just overpaid, but it's not like you suck at it.

So when Matt Beleskey gets $25 million over five years, he's just not gonna be a $5 million-level player. Would he be a bargain at $3 million? Probably. And the difference is one that's going to define how he's perceived more or less for the remainder of his career.

If he's smart, he takes $4 million for six years and probably no one says a word about it. Not having everyone think you suck for five years might be worth a million dollars, especially if it helps you get one last contract on the back end. I dunno, just something to think about.

7. Going with two goalies

And while we're talking about misallocation of cap resources, why on earth would any team, let alone one like Dallas that's not likely to be among the top cap teams in the league, spend $10.4 million on two goaltenders who are slightly better than average?

Yeah, the drop-off from an ideal season from Kari Lehtonen — I still think the horrible season he had scared Jim Nill way more than it should have — to Antti Niemi is less than that of Lehtonen-if-he-sucks-again (which he probably won't, and oh yeah P.S. he definitely did last year) to [insert backup here].

But is that worth $4.5 million? Almost certainly not. Insurance policies really shouldn't be that expensive.

There is, of course, the whole “They want to keep Jack Campbell in the AHL as a starter for one more year” consideration, but a $10.4 million stopgap for the next three years doesn't seem like the best use of, a) Campbell's waning prime — he'll already be 24 in January — or, b) the team's cap dollars. Don't they need to sign a defenseman at some point? Seems like.

6. The Devan Dubnyk contract

Was it for a little longer than it probably should have been? Yes. Was it for a little cheaper than he might have commanded on the open market? Also yes. Seems to me that's a Good Compromise.

5. Dean Lombardi

Lots of mixed emotions for the Kings GM this week, for sure.

On the one hand he was faced with the humiliation of having to admit he should have bought out Mike Richards last season when the amnesty was available. Everything you read about that was basically him feeling like the dumbest ol' dummy in the league.

But then this mega-lucky break comes along that allows him to — at least temporarily — weasel his way out of that deal by simply terminating it. “Mike Richards allegedly did something at the border, you say?” So much of this is still shrouded in mystery as I write it, so all we know right now is:

• Lombardi found out about whatever this is during the draft while negotiations with Calgary and Edmonton were ongoing.

• He immediately told Calgary and Edmonton he wouldn't do any such deal because it wouldn't be fair to them.

• Investigations with border authorities and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are apparently ongoing.

• They terminated his contract so they didn't have to buy him out.

• That contract-termination is going to take forever to resolve because even if Richards deserves it from the Kings' point of view, there's probably not enough reason to void a deal as far as the legal system is concerned, and also because it would set a horrible precedent for the NHLPA to just roll over on this.

I think that covers everything, but if it buys the Kings a little more wiggle room against the cap, maybe they can use that money to retain one of Justin Williams or Andrej Sekera. Oh and he got Milan Lucic at a steeply discounted cap hit for a guy he was worried about losing to an offer sheet anyway, a mid-first rounder, and a borderline NHL-ready defenseman.

Dean Lombardi started out having an okay weekend from a hockey standpoint. Weird as it is to say, the Mike Richards situation might have given him a great one. Maybe. We'll see. It's all weird right now.

4. The Hall of Famers

I mean, I guess it's rare that the committee gets things exactly right, but they got things exactly right this time around. Couldn't have done better with it.

3. Buyout bargains

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: If you're a GM who doesn't kick the tires on every guy who gets bought out, you're not doing your job.

Guys get bought out with regularity, of course, and that means they're still getting paid by their former employers even as they're able to seek employment from other teams. Which, in turn, means that said other teams can usually get them for less than they're worth. Often far less.

The impact on perceived value here is crucial, because that means guys like PA Parenteau, Cody Hodgson, Alex Semin (I'll talk more about him in a minute), and maybe even Mike Richards, among others, will probably sign for bargain-basement deals and provide value well above their actual cost to a new team.

The Habs bought out Parenteau, for instance, because he admittedly went through a bit of a down year production-wise. He was still a perfectly bottom-six possession-driver and, yeah, he obviously wasn't worth what Montreal paid him this past season in their view, but he's not worth nothing now. He can be worth quite a lot. Especially if he signs for, say, $2.5 million. And man, what if it's less?

We saw the value here with the reigning Cup winners. Chicago had a hole at the No. 2 center position at the same time the Rangers compliance'd Brad Richards. Stan Bowman signs him for one year at $2 million per, he and Patrick Kane have a strong season together (Richards was sixth on the team in points per 60 with a 54.3 CF%) and probably he'll get one more deal out of this, plus that whole Stanley Cup thing.

That was well worth $2 million. If your favorite team's GM is smart, he's on the phone with these bought-out guys first thing, because they're going to be available, cheap, and still valuable.

2. Calgary's D corps

Name a better top-3 in the league than Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, and Dougie Hamilton. You can't do it because such a defense does not exist. All three could be a No. 1 defenseman for more than half the teams in this league.

And while you would really not be too smart to walk around with Kris Russell and Dennis Wideman as your whole second pairing, bumping one of them down to the third pairing, and maybe Deryk Engelland out of the lineup entirely really shores up that blue line hard.

1. An insane week

Seriously, what about this week hasn't been nutso? It's been more entertaining than the Cup Final. Blessings to this week and all who participated in it. Blessings to you.

(Not ranked this week: David Poile continuing his pursuit of Mike Ribeiro.

Is having a 36-year-old No. 2 center as your No. 1 center this damn important to you, Dave? Jesus Christ. Figure it out. This is disgusting.)