The Colorado Avalanche announced the re-signing of Marek Svatos to a one-year, $1.2M deal. That is a slight raise from what he received last year ($1.05M if I recall correctly) and some may say it's unjustified. After packing away 32 goals in his rookie season, tying Joe Sakic for team lead and placing him 3rd behind fellow rookies Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, he managed just 15 goals in a career-high 66 games.
So why the raise? Well it's hard to believe that a 32-goal-scoring rookie is destined for failure in the league. Locking him up for another season gives him a chance to show which year was the fluke - the 32 goals or the 15 goals. If it's the latter, then you can consider the investment unwise and get out. If it's the former, you've built a relationship with him and shown that you have confidence in him. It could very well be that this sign of confidence propels him out of the gate this coming season.
Which can't come soon enough if you ask me.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Avalanche Re-sign Svatos
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4 Comments:
You inspired me to write a post about this with a deeper look at his stats over on BB&R.;
http://onveutlacoupe.blogspot.com/2007/07/svatos-sophmore-slump-say-that-three.html
Hi Mike,
Great post. The shot quality/percentage stats was an interesting point.
I think Turgeon's play was missed by Svatos this year as well. Svatos isn't a "do-it-myself" type player as we saw this year. He needs some skill around him and then he'll be able to find the net.
And good work on the new site!
Good point about Turgeon, I had forgotten about that.
With all the Vanek crap that happened this week, it made me wonder, was Svatos a UFA or RFA? If he was a UFA, I'm surprised he didn't see more offers than just the Avs (that we know of) and if he was and RFA, why didn't somebody try an poach him? Does the rest of the league consider him just another Vrbata (lots of promise, but one-dimensional and streaky)?
Svatos was an RFA. The Avs qualified him on June 28th so he was locked up before anybody could try to poach him.
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