steve (Posted 2008-07-07 19:46:35)
The problem here is Lowe has been an Albertan for a while now, and Alberta boys dont "talk fight"......... however, im sure the only "ring" that tellytub duck would be interested in comes with many others in a cardboard box from A&W..... careful K-Lowe, he'll goad you then sue you.

Troy (Posted 2008-07-07 11:36:00)
This is really simple. K-Lowe simply forced GM's to do their in house signings to give him more of a chance to land UFA's. Its no secret that not a lot of players want to play in E-town, but now with a new owner we have opened up some eyes around the league for future UFA's which will hopefully come to play here. Granted we were unable to land any UFA's but he all he did really was open certain GM's eyes and make them realize that what they have in house may be more valuable than what is available on the open market. Nobody held a gun to Regeir's head & told him he had to pay Vanek that money, he's been lowballing players for years in Buffalo. Just ask Briere, Drury or Campbell. He could have locked these guys up long term but chose not to because he was too cheap. The Vanek contract proved that Buffalo did have the $$ but didnt want to pay, whether they paid the right guy remains to be seen. That contract was a warning to other Gm's what K-Lowe was up to, Burke was sleeping & overpaid both Bertuzzi & Schneider prior to losing Penner. K-Lowe seen more potential in Penner than Burke had budgeted for him and he's an Oiler now. Burke wants to draw attention away from his own mistake & blame Lowe for a league wide problem, gimme a break. It's the GM's overall responsibility to do what he believes is right for HIS team to succeed, after all it is a salary cap era & every team has it's own CAP in which they live or die by. 10yrs ago the league was overpaying players for what they had done in the PAST. Now the teams are seemingly overpaying for what the players might do in the FUTURE. I'm no GM but I'd rather overpay for a players potential than overpay for diminishing skills.

Chris Marsh (Posted 2008-07-07 08:54:01)
I wouldn't call Kevin Lowe,or any NHL 'er an idiot,because I have respect for all of them. If I were Edmonton brass I would ask Kevin not to make huge offers to players who have just finished long , successfull playoff runs.It's like in the stock market they say "buy low,sell high". Kevin is buying high.Bob Gainey should try to sign Bertuzzi at a low salary , because his value has dropped big time,& we need size & toughness.Go Habs go!!!

Gord Smith (Posted 2008-07-06 13:51:58)
hey, LOL. You must not have much of a view with your head so far up your backside. According to the NHL, there was no offer sheet to Lundqvist. I guess that you know something that the league doesn't. You are obviously not a Canucks fan or you would agree with Kevin Lowe that Burke is a moron who left Vancouver with absolutely no depth and a serious lack of top end talent. If not for the Luongo heist, Vancouver might have had a shot at Stamkos. When you look at Anaheim, all of their top end talent was either there before Burke or signed as free agents with the exception of Pronger. When Burke goes to Toronto, maybe he can convince Mrs. Pronger that the only place she wants to live is Toronto. After all, Toronto, Burke and Pronger all deserve each other. They have all shown that character and intelligence don't matter in the NHL. But maybe I'm wrong and Jeff Finger is the next Niklas Lidstrom.

Bob Starcky (Posted 2008-07-06 06:21:33)
It's hard to fathom why the anti-offer sheet camp is coming down so hard on Lowe here; theoretically, the offer sheet ensures that young players have an opportunity to earn their fair shake too--as it should be. Brian Burke makes it seem like his little fraternity of GMs only agreed to this provision of the CBA in order to pay lip service to the principle of free enterprise, while maintaining a "gentleman's" (har) agreement between the league's GMs to subvert that very principle where young players are concerned, thus allowing GMs to hoard and underpay young talent. That to me is a disloyal practice, and more destructive to the league than a few oversized contracts. It's certainly self-destructive to organizations that count on this gentleman's agreement rather than offering a little loyalty and good faith to hold onto young talent, since underpaid people are generally unhappy people, and so more likely to bolt when they hit UFA status. Then teams end up losing a guy hitting his prime, and get no compensation. Brian Burke should be more concerned with why he couldn't get Penner signed before he was eligible to receive offers--why wouldn't a decent young player not want to play another couple years on a supposedly competitive Anaheim team? And as we saw, the Ducks had more issues last season than just Edmonton's poaching of Penner. The Niedermayer/Selanne debacle showed that Burke put a higher value on showing respect to a couple of past-their-prime veterans than doing what was best for the team. He let those two dangle the Ducks, and they got embarrassed in the first round. And it's hard to take Burke's complaints about skyrockething salaries when he's the one that overpaid for Schneider and Bertuzzi--which, by the way, was a product of teams having to meet the cap minimum. Hmm, maybe that's why salaries are getting bloated? But this was another provision that GMs like Burke agreed to. I do think Burke is justified to feel that Lowe is stupid for signing Penner, but only because the money Lowe spent on Penner probably could have been used to make Edmonton better in other places, since the reality is the Ducks still made the playoffs at least without Penner, while Edmonton failed to reach with him. But that's the risk involved. Burke gambles that Penner's not worth it; Lowe gambles Penner is worth more than the draft picks surrendered; Penner gambles that he can either live up to his contract, or that what he gets now will outweigh what he might have gotten later if he had stuck with a better Anaheim team. Of course, if Burke and Lowe would stop their bickering, maybe they could pay attention to what Ken Holland is doing over there in Detroit and learn a little.

LOL (Posted 2008-07-05 23:31:57)
Kevin Lowe IS an idiot. I dont care what you edmonton fans think about him. You all have sentimental value to him just cause he was a good hockey player for Edmonton. BIG DEAL. He is an idiot GM as much as Burke is. Kevin Lowe is as much as responsible for driving up young players contracts before they are UFA's just as much as Garth Snow is. Penner is CRAP. Burke will NOT fail in Toronto being that there is only one way to go now in Toronto...and thats up. Had Lowe did these good deals he is doing this offseason last year, then he wouldnt be so critisized and he rightly should be. Burke is and always will be more of a hockey mind then a former player turned GM. I cant stand when hockey teams immediately turn a player into a GM. It shows they are just plain DESPERATE. Edmonton fans are just all delusional...more so then us Leaf fans.

dylan (Posted 2008-07-05 22:23:13)
Big long term offers to young players with the expectation of them growing into them didn't start with Penner. Nash, DiPietro, and other players came first. Lowe even signed one with Hemsky a year earlier. Wake Up Burke! This is the new NHL! And it didn't start with Penner. Offer sheets should be happening if teams want to stay competitive. The onus is on Burke to keep his talent locked up. If he can't get it together then he has no one else to blame but himself. Just like the Anaheim media is to blame for encouraging Burke's ongoing verbal diarhea.

Flyer guy 16 (Posted 2008-07-05 21:39:55)
Lowe using his cups won as a player vs. Burke's as a G.M. is hilarious! By his thinking Serge Savard would be considered a superior G.M. to Lou Lamorello.

Dave (Posted 2008-07-05 18:14:39)
I agree that Lowe's contract offer to Penner was too high and understand why Burke was orginally upset but he would not shut up about it for a year and Lowe reached his breaking point with Burke. We in Vancouver know Burke has a huge ego and tried to get many members of the media fired. He could never get the Canucks a decent goalie and won a total of one playoff series and inherited much of the team just as he did in Anahiem. He still did a decent job here but his flaws are that he is a control freak and can't keep his mouth shut.

Christopher Pfeifer (Posted 2008-07-05 15:47:47)
How can you compare kunitz to penner. Kunitz is a 50-60 point player, gets paid 3.25 million is one of the top floor checkers in the leaugue, a plus player who plays two way hockey. plays on the penalty kill. and your going to compare him to penner who gets paid 4.25 million for a 40-50 point player, who plays no defense minus 12. I mean I like penner, but not for a one year player who was handfed goals in Anaheim.

hemsky83 (Posted 2008-07-05 15:45:24)
read the whole interview on tsn.ca. This is only a fraction of what he said

Dave (Posted 2008-07-05 14:59:34)
It would have been nice to see him explain why offering Dustin Penner that contract was a wise move and how it didn't drive up the prices of players.

Oilman (Posted 2008-07-05 13:47:13)
Pure strategical exploitation of a weakness. Burke signed Bertuzzi the week before the Penner offer. This put his back up against the salary cap wall. Teams who dance that close to the salary cap deserve to be pickpocketed of their younger players. Adds up to on thing... League parity.

JayR (Posted 2008-07-05 13:34:01)
Lowe is an idiot.His offer sheets to Penner and Vanek are the reason the salaries have gotten ridiculous again.HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT NOBODY WANTS TO PLAY IN EDMONTON?????????

cordell wynder (Posted 2008-07-05 12:19:23)
Burke was correct in the way u dont start giving young players high contracts. Especialy after only one good season. Come on Lowe offered Vanek $50 million over 7 years, and look what happen last season. Some players are a product of the team around them. But by themselves not that great. All your doing is wasting that money when you could use some of it to sign a veteran. For Penner size he should banging bodies off the boards like Kunitz. Penner is a little soft thats why Carlyle had to yell in his ear every now and then. He needs a little motivation and hes not that smart anyways to leave contender for for a team that might not make the playoffs for another 5 or 6 years.

Scott Landry (Posted 2008-07-05 11:30:46)
I find it odd that Penner's offer sheet was for similar money to what Anaheim signed Kunitz for, yet Burke says Lowe is the bad guy. What's the difference? Frankly I like Penner's upside better than Kunitz. And their money is similar.

Jeff McKee (Posted 2008-07-05 11:25:04)
I agree with the thoughts about "old school, old boys rule". Life is full of that stuff. However, things change. This is now 2008. I don't think the Wal-Marts of this world play by the "old boys rules". We will continue to see some offer sheets. Just one so far this year. The GM's are taking a more pro-active approach to signing their young players this year and we have seen more file to use the arbitrators. The idea there is that the players/ownership get a fair contract. The owners voted for the cap and all the nuiances that are associated with it.

icehound (Posted 2008-07-05 11:07:00)
Burke may be a self-promoting blowhard, but he is spot on. Everyone who says: "Well, it's in the CBA - It's the way business is done. Lowe was just trying to better his team is missing the point. Everyone in the NHL knows everyone else - And they are all beholden to an unspoken code of "old-school Hockey decency". You don't crap where you eat, or where you sleep. You don't burn other teams or GM's just because it's allowed. Lowe needs to admit that he was desperate and did the only thing he could to save his sorry hide, and deflect criticism by the Oiler fans - Which was to purposefully attempt to sabotage another team's dealings with their players, just to show he was doing "something".

Costas (Posted 2008-07-05 03:29:13)
Burke is mouth peice and needs a mic to be jammed in his throat, like lowe said he is a media junkie and he did not make the ducks what they are most of it was there when he got there. Kevin should of let lose on him before this but he is more a man then i am cause i would told him long ago. If people think Don cherry is bad well Brian burke makes him look like a small fly Brian needs to be givin the proper size tampon cause im sick of hearing is crying all the time and im sure im not the only one .....