For what it’s worth, HockeySverige.se’s Robin Olausson has noted that former Red Wings forward Frans Nielsen spoke with Danish website DR.dk’s Sebastian Taarsted Bager this morning.
Nielsen is currently playing with the Danish Olympic ice hockey team as they attempt to qualify for the 2022 Olympics, and Nielsen states that “I’m going to find a new team, but it’s not that urgent right now. There are teams that are interested, but I do not have the full picture of who they are.”
Nielsen explains that there are teams in both North America and Europe who want him to play for them, and he does state that he’s intrigued by playing “closer to home” in Europe [i.e. for a European-based team], though he still wants to play in the NHL.
At present, Nielsen says that he’s focused on helping the Danes qualify for the Olympics, but after the Danish team plays in the IIHF’s qualifying round a little later this month, he’ll commence looking for another team to play on in earnest.
He does not say anything about being bought out by the Red Wings, which hasn’t been made official by the team as of yet, but the fact that Nielsen’s looking for work is evidence enough.
Sports is the ultimate “what have you done for me lately” arena. If you can do the job then you have a job. What skews things out of whack is how athletes get paid for what they did in the past rather than what they do now in the hope that they will be able to repeat the performance that got them the contract in the first place.
With modern statistical metrics I have sometimes wondered if using these statistics to calculate how much each facet of performance is worth and paying based on that would be helpful.
If each goal was found to be worth say 375,000 dollars then a 20 goal scorer would get paid 7 1/2 million bucks. And so on for different aspects of a sport.
Allowance for injury, sickness, and other things would need to be calculated. Such a scheme would maybe leave more
opportunities open especially for fringe players.
At this point, I can’t imagine players wanting to play for pay based upon how they perform in a given season, with each goal, assist or plus-minus rating giving them X amount of dollars, but that’s just my take.
Also, how would the intangibles be costed? Things like an experienced player’s potential effect in team meetings & locker room, on the bench, etc., would be impossible to place $$$ values on.
George you are no doubt correct in that players would not favor this sort of pay system, mostly because people do not like change.
If they ever did change in some way there would be discussions about things like intangibles. Ways could be found but why would they bother? I just reflected on Frans and a big reason for his lack of options.
Stars get paid. Kids get basic contracts. Meanwhile the journeyman player sees fewer openings to play. And teams get burdened with bloated contracts for players who cash in on career years that they never repeat.
Don’t get me wrong, at my own level I did the same thing and made as much as I could get from my job. The old saying was that the company was paying me for what I know just in case the knowledge was ever needed.
Now I know more than I use.