Injuries hurting Jackets’ budget
Constantly calling up minor-leaguers a pain in wallet for MacLean
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Michael Arace
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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DENVER — After being beaten 6-3 by the Sharks in San Jose, the Blue Jackets jetted to the Colorado capital, where they landed in the wee hours of yesterday morning. A dizzying chain of telephone calls began as soon as they touched down. The hunt for bodies was on, again, and it is costly.
President and general manager Doug Mac-Lean dialed assistant GM Jim Clark, who was in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the World Junior Championship, and hockey operations manager Chris MacFarland, who was asleep in Columbus. From there, calls were made to Syracuse Crunch coach Gary Agnew, who was asleep in Albany, N.Y., or maybe Springfield, Mass., and Dayton Bombers coach Don MacAdam, who was asleep in Dayton. It was a chain reaction.
The Blue Jackets needed two bodies after Trevor Letowski was drilled by a hit for the ages (hello, Kyle McLaren) and Dan Fritsche hit a wall at 100 mph in San Jose. The bodies from Syracuse needed to be in Denver within 24 hours. In turn, Syracuse needed bodies from Dayton, and Dayton needed bodies from . . . hey, do you play hockey?
The arrangements had to be settled upon before the sun rose in the Eastern time zone, and before MacLean and team services director Jim Rankin went to bed in the Mountain zone.
For the Blue Jackets, this type of thing is happening all too often, and it is costly.
"Typically, we allot $500,000 in the budget for injuries," MacLean said yesterday morning. "We were anywhere from $500,000 to $900,000 in each of our first four years. So, you allow for an extra contract, a 23 rd guy. (This season), we’re trending to be well over $2 million."
That would be an added $2 million in costs to pay Syracuse players NHL-level salaries when they come up, which is every other day.
The Blue Jackets have lost nearly 170 man-games to injury, and we’re not talking about pulled groins. They’ve had players felled for weeks- and months-long stretches with high ankle sprains, torn knee ligaments, broken legs, broken hands, fractured jaws and fractured and dislocated sternums.
"I’ve never seen anything like it," said coach Gerard Gallant, who has spent nearly 20 years in and around the league as a player and coach.
Although the play of the Blue Jackets (12-27-1) has been wanting on many levels, there is little doubt that the injuries have had an impact on performance. What impact would defenseman Adam Foote have had playing against the Sharks’ top line, which amassed four goals and seven assists Thursday night? Foote has a hip injury and isn’t on the trip, which continues today against the Colorado Avalanche.
The injuries also have produced a financial chain reaction.
"We’re caught in a situation where the gate is slightly down because of the compression of the schedule in an Olympic year and because the team’s performance probably isn’t where it should be," MacLean said. "We’re down 8 percent in ticket revenues, about 3 percent of which is due to a decrease in prices. So call it a 5 percent decrease — but that’s $2 million.
"Add in the payroll costs (because of injuries) and suddenly you’re talking about a potential $4 million budget swing."
The new collective bargaining agreement includes a $39 million salary cap. MacLean hasn’t pushed that envelope. He saved around $900,000 in the Geoff Sanderson deal. He subtracted enough in the Sergei Fedorov deal to make the net cost around $1.8 million, despite the $6 million heft of Fedorov’s contract.
Despite these efforts, Mac-Lean has had frightening moments when it comes to cap management. Every time a player is recalled from Syracuse, the player’s salary goes from $60,000 or so that doesn’t count against the cap to at least $450,000, prorated, that does count against the cap.
"From a cap perspective, I’d have suspected I’d be in the $33 million range," MacLean said. "I’ve been as high as $39 million on the cap because of injuries. At one particular time, I had $14.4 million of cap money on injured reserve."
The cap projections will ease downward as the Blue Jackets get healthier, and they are pointing in that direction. They’re also knocking on wood. They have a budget, and more injuries mean greater costs, a higher cap number and less flexibility in terms of future personnel moves.
Then there are the cell phone bills . . .
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