I feel bad for Rick, and I'm saying that as an Islander fan, in a position to be uniquely harmed by Rick's failure at the NHL level.
Does having a salary cap $2M smaller than everybody else's hurt the team? Sure it does, but it's not like the Parise and Suter contracts forcing Minnesota to have a salary cap $14M smaller than everybody else's. It's not THAT bad. It was never that bad. It's so harmless that I actually gave him a very similar contract in my long running NHL 04 Islanders dynasty (knowing I can upgrade the training facilities, heh heh), just so I wouldn't ever have to worry about the goaltender position, often a position I could forget even existed in the older NHL titles, leaving me with 59 OVR guys all the time LOL.
I don't think anybody would remember it at all if not for that damn Roberto Luongo trade. If the Islanders had just picked somebody else in 1997, and actually had a goaltending hole that needed filled when we picked Rick, none of the acrimony surrounding his contract would've happened. Not in my opinion anyway, because the contract didn't even end up hurting the team that bad. Not as bad as some of the other things we've done, nor was he that bad of a player, as you've just finished discussing.
Rick doesn't deserve all the flak that he gets. It's more an unfortunate story than anything else. I believe he could've been a great player had things gone differently. It's unfortunate that he has to be remembered like this.
I feel bad for Rick, and I'm saying that as an Islander fan, in a position to be uniquely harmed by Rick's failure at the NHL level.
Does having a salary cap $2M smaller than everybody else's hurt the team? Sure it does, but it's not like the Parise and Suter contracts forcing Minnesota to have a salary cap $14M smaller than everybody else's. It's not THAT bad. It was never that bad. It's so harmless that I actually gave him a very similar contract in my long running NHL 04 Islanders dynasty (knowing I can upgrade the training facilities, heh heh), just so I wouldn't ever have to worry about the goaltender position, often a position I could forget even existed in the older NHL titles, leaving me with 59 OVR guys all the time LOL.
I don't think anybody would remember it at all if not for that damn Roberto Luongo trade. If the Islanders had just picked somebody else in 1997, and actually had a goaltending hole that needed filled when we picked Rick, none of the acrimony surrounding his contract would've happened. Not in my opinion anyway, because the contract didn't even end up hurting the team that bad. Not as bad as some of the other things we've done, nor was he that bad of a player, as you've just finished discussing.
Rick doesn't deserve all the flak that he gets. It's more an unfortunate story than anything else. I believe he could've been a great player had things gone differently. It's unfortunate that he has to be remembered like this.