Two, Columbus only had one NHL goalie prior to claiming Dubie. Leclaire hasn’t played since November and it recently came out that he has an ankle injury. He is now on IR and will likely have season-ending surgery to repair the injury, so CBJ needed some sort of backup to Mason.

On the bright side, unless Leclaire suffers serious complications Dubie will be available at the end of the season. Assuming that NYI find a solution to their goalie dilemma, they probably won’t want him then.

Next, it is very unlikely that this was part of some sort of scheme to extract something extra in a trade with NYI. Why? Because Columbus needs a goalie. Also, all those Doug Weight rumors have pretty much died off, and the team has said that they’re no longer interested in him. Comrie might be interesting, but we’d still need another goalie and we’d also have to trade a prospect to get him. That seems unlikely since our current prospects are doing so well and we need them for a playoff push.

Howson’s strategy has been (and supposedly will be) to continue to pick up players where possible without touching prospects. He’s basically looking to trade picks and AHL players. Unless the NYI are willing to take a pick or two for Comrie (and I don’t see it), it’s not going to happen.

Finally, to whoever said that NYI should sign Nash when he makes it to FA, keep dreaming. Nash will not make it to FA. He and Howson have both stated their intentions to sign a long term contract as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the first day that they’re allowed to sign the new contract (per the CBA) is July 1 2009, so there has been a lot of rumor and speculation about Nash in the meantime. But Nash and Howson said that they BOTH expect a deal to be done on July 1. In the strange case that Nash WOULDN’T want to sign with Columbus, he’s still under contract until the end of the 2010 season and does not have a no-trade clause. Because he’s worth so much Howson would trade him long before he made it to FA.

By this I mean that the Islanders franchise seems always end up trading away any players that look like they’ll develop into elite players (Rick DiPietro excepted, then again it’s debatable whether he’s elite). Granted the Leafs are probably the worst team in the NHL when it comes to drafting and developing young players.

If anybody is offended or seething with anger, I apologize.

Anyway, I hope this guy will make his way to the allstar game 2010.

I’ll clarify this here since I didn’t see anyone else doing it and because of so many people calling it a “stupid rule”. Now I do think that a correction to the rule that would exempt the 30th place team of it would be a good idea, and some here only have a problem with that. Still, others question the rule itself, but it is there for a reason – especially in the cap era, although it’s an older rule, having been around since the late 80s or early 90s.

Before the rule, teams were able to sign good players only for the playoffs or late in the season, which was ridiculously common at one point. At least the dynasty Oilers made a habit of this, Tikkanen in -85 maybe the most high profile (even though not egregious) example. Players would play a full season in Europe and join an NHL team in time for the playoffs. This made it possible to either hoard good players or acquire depth cheaply. Of course this was made easier and more palatable to Euro teams because their seasons were shorter back then and therefore over by NHL playoffs. Also, there was no limit how late you could sign someone.

Then, coming back to present time, imagine how a team close to the cap could abuse this, especially with the current lack of transfer agreements. Just send a couple of midlevel players to the KHL, for instance, replace them with minimum salary guys for most of the season and sign them game-ready at the trade (and UFA signing) deadline when over three quarters of their salaries will have gone around the cap. Even with a transfer agreement, I’m sure players could get an “until the NHL deadline” contract with crappy European teams, considering that European regular seasons are either over or only have a few games left at that point.