Like me, many people were baffled when Jeff Finger was awarded a hefty raise by the Toronto Maple Leafs, while Kurt Sauer signed with the Coyotes for the very reasonable sum of $1.75M/year. Mainly because Sauer is the better defenseman.
Dan Tolensky noticed as well. And he's come up with a rather interesting thesis: maybe Fletcher mistook Finger for Sauer?
"A lot of people in Toronto are asking me, 'Who the hell is Jeff Finger?' simply because they haven't seen him play. But, [former Colorado coach] Joel Quennville told me he was one of the five best defensemen in the Western Conference last year. He played against the best players on every other team. [Leafs' coach] Ron Wilson told me he was always on the ice in San Jose games against Joe Thornton. Same thing with Jarome Iginla in Calgary, or the Sedin twins [Henrik and Daniel] in Vancouver. Quennville said [Finger] was his best defenseman in the last half of the year."
...
It’s worth noting that when James Mirtle ranked the available d-men based on Quality of Competition, Kurt Sauer was #2 among all available players behind Adam Foote (who didn’t make it onto the market). Looking at all defenders in the league using Gabriel Desjardins' numbers on behindthenet.ca , Sauer’s Quality of Competition trailed only Ballard, Lidstrom, Morris, Hejda, Foote, Mitchell and Clark and tied with Kuba, Hamhuis, Phillips, Bouwmeester and Ranger.
Jeff Finger was tied at #199 with Erskine, Janik, Sekera, Michalek, Schubert, Kukkonen and Carle.
If the Leafs wanted the guy who played significant minutes against Thornton, Iginla, the Sedins, and other stars, they signed the wrong player.
This has the potential to be one of the worst/funniest GM mistakes in a long, long time.
Read it all.
