Here is more on Bayda's bid for an NHL contract. Looks as if Bayda could be heading to Europe to play hockey.
It's late August, with NHL training camps only days away from opening, and Ryan Bayda is starting over. Again.
In May, Bayda was playing for the Carolina Hurricanes in the final game of their Eastern Conference finals sweep at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Three months later, he is still looking for work.
He came into the league as a third-round pick harboring hopes of being a scoring forward. After a nasty knee injury, he recast himself as a gritty hard-working fourth-liner, playing his way back into the NHL.
Now, he's just looking for a place to play.
"It's not the fun part of hockey, that's for sure," Bayda said from his offseason home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "It's pretty nerve-wracking still sitting around at the end of August with people asking you where you are going, and you don't have a good answer for them."
Bayda has seen the good times, the playoff wins and the six-figure contracts. He also has seen the other side of hockey, where no matter how well you played the season before, no one is interested in your services -- at least, not interested enough.
For players such as Bayda, the goal is a one-way contract, which has one salary, an NHL salary. Those are given to players the team expects to spend the entire season in the NHL, as Bayda did last season. Everyone else gets a two-way contract, with one salary for the NHL and one salary for the minors. The NHL minimum is $500,000. The best minor league players are lucky to crack $100,000 on the other side of their contracts. [News & Observer]
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