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Red Wings Sign Dan Cleary, Stupidly Waste Roster/Cap/Contract Space

Happy Friday afternoon before Labor Day, everybody! You know what it means when you get to late Friday on a holiday weekend.

That’s right, kiddos… we’ve got a signing the organization knows the fans will hate that they’re going to sneak in!

Smile away, Dan.

I’ve fairly well covered how I feel about the concept of an illegal, unenforceable promise made to a guy who’s taking up a currently-unkown cap hit, a current (waiver-eligible) roster spot, and a spot against the 50-man contract limit, but here’s a quick reminder for you:

For one, Dan Cleary is not a valuable player and that the “loyalty” aspect of bringing him back should really have an opposite effect in showing potential free agents that you’ll never be as loved as success story reclamation projects who have been with the team for a long time. There’s also a little thing about how promising to make up for how much Dan Cleary walked away from in Philadelphia is absolutely illegal.

Here’s the impact that we know right now:

  • Dan Cleary would have to clear waivers before he could be assigned to Grand Rapids, provided he doesn’t make the team out of camp.
  • Being a single-year deal, Dan Cleary can retire without any of this contract staying on the Red Wings’ salary cap.
  • Being a single-year deal for a player over 35, it’s entirely possible there are performance bonuses attached to this deal.
  • No, this is not the end of the world, but it’s not a good idea either. /

We’ll update things as we get more contract details. Per team policy, that will be released as soon as some digger gets it because for some reason they still do things like this.

UPDATE!

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