Weber Stays in Music City!

1) No surprise to Fauxrumors, but apparently its a surprise to may journalists and bloggers but the Nashville Predators have matched the offer sheet made by the Philadelphia Flyers.  Many were looking at the amount of upfront money, as well as thinking that the signing meant that Weber wanted out and this would force the Preds to either accept the four 1st rounders or perhaps deal their captain to The City of Brotherly Love.  What these folks were missing and what we at Fauxrumors were apparently alone in thinking was that the Predators HAD to retain Weber else they would cease to exist as a legitimate NHL franchise.

2) We maintain what we wrote last Thursday, that the flyers-do-predators-favour.  Nashville already lost free-agent defenseman Ryan Suter to Minnesota this summer, and losing Weber would have been a double blow to their defense-first team that had 104 points last season.  As they said in their statement, and echoed in our post last week we felt that a decision not to match the offer sheet send a negative message to current Predators players and other NHL organizations, a message that the Predators would only go so far to protect its best players and be pushed around by teams with "deep pockets?"

3) Few expected the folks in Nashville to be able to retain Weber with the incredibly front loaded offer sheet the Flyers signed Weber to last week.  In essence Weber will get 68 of his 110 million in the first 6 years, including an incredible 14 million in his first year (including the signing bonus) Most other than us at Fauxrumors, felt this would preclude the low revenue franchise from retaining their captain.  What they didn't take into account was the fact that the NHL didn't want to have this precident occur during the current CBA negotiations. What better way to prove their point that the NHL needs better revenue sharing than to show how a small market team lost 2 of its stars. One as a UFA and one as a RFA. The ladder pillfered by a big revenue team by giving it more money than a small market team could possibly compete with.  So in the end the Flyers did the Predators a favor. They now will have their best player/captain signed for the rest of his career!

 

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