Free agents most likely to bust (Commodore)

I saw this article on Allan Muir INSIDE THE NHL. Apparently he seems to think that former Sioux Mike Commodore is not worth the 4th-highest salary on the Blue Jackets and that he is going to be a bust this season with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Oh well! I guess this is why they pay these hockey writers all of this money to pontificate about hockey during the offseason.

Free agents most likely to bust
was driving on a rural road on the outskirts of Dallas a few weeks back when I happened upon something shocking: A station selling gas at $3.49 a gallon.

Considering what it would cost to fill up a tank in town, I paid my $40 and was happy to do it.

Of course, you know what's next. The same station is at $3.29 this week, and that $40 doesn't seem like such a great deal in hindsight.

Which brings me to the central theme of today's discussion: Though the concept of what qualifies as a good value is constantly shifting, the necessity of actually finding value is constant. And that's as true for NHL teams working under the constraints of a salary cap as it is for average Joes like us who are trying to afford a full tank without the lucrative benefits of free agency.

We're still more than two months out from the start of the new season, so at this point every team that played the free agent market probably feels like it got someone it wanted at a price it was happy to pay.

But did they?

History shows that more free agent signings lead to buyer's remorse than invites to speak at bargain hunter conferences. Odds are that there'll be a few spectacular busts among this year's crop. But whose deal will look the worst by the end of the season? The contracts of Jeff Finger (Toronto), Michael Ryder (Boston), Jose Theodore (Washington) and Ryan Malone (Tampa Bay) all have raised eyebrows, but they don't have the same whiff of potential failure as these.

4. Mike Commodore (five years, $18.75 million)
Go ahead. Roll those numbers around a bit, see if you can figure out exactly what the Blue Jackets hope to get from a deal that essentially makes a No. 1 blueliner out of a guy who's better known for a wheels-off hairdo and wearing housecoats than for anything he's done on the ice. It's not just the nearly $4 million per year -- the fourth-highest salary on the team -- but the term. This is the sort of deal that will hamstring Columbus GM Scott Howson when he gets serious about building a playoff-worthy defense.