re sharks kingston fired in article apr csd newshost stanford edu nlu xenon stanford edu nelson lu writes in article apr iscnvx lmsc lockheed com spiegel sgi msd lmsc lockheed com mark spiegel writes in article apr csd newshost stanford edu nlu xenon stanford edu nelson lu writes i said gund will have to open his checkbook i didn t say give up any draft picks or promising talent if we could have gotten murphy for the m great but i agree the sharks shouldn t give up young talent or early round draft picks i listed chelios et al only to indicate the type of player i think the sharks need to pick up the rules on signing free agents less than years old puts a big restriction on what the sharks can pick up however i do believer they need to pick up some players who will add toughness to the team but you have to remember that you re unlikely to get any real quality free agents who do not require compensation the sharks tried with makarov who was probably the top of the class among non compensation free agents but even he probably wouldn t have helped too much don t expect to get top quality just some toughness i don t view makarov as a player who would add toughness size hopefully won t be much of a worry next year alexander cherbayev and michal sykora have agreed to multi year contracts and it appears that mike rathje will also sign soon all three are pretty big size alone isn t enough we all know how much fear kolstad struck in the eyes of opponents not well rathje and sykora are both highly touted prospects unlike kolstad and cherbayev was initially supposed to play for the russian wc team anybody know what happened there that means that he s likely to be good enough nelson you re confusing skill and toughness mcgill hammond johan garpenlov would you really rather have those two instead of johan by your logic then you enjoy having falloon and ozolinsh on injured reserve by your logic then you think that if the sharks had kept mcgill and hammond that you can guarantee that falloon and ozolinsh wouldn t have gotten hurt think again there was a chance that mcgill would have caused ozolinsh to get stuck at kc and as you know hammond is worthless and mcgill is almost worthless well wilson maybe but i don t think falloon and ozolinsh were really injured on cheapshots who said they were if they weren t then i don t see any justification that having mcgill and hammond around would prevent their injuries if the injuries of falloon and ozolinsh were purely accidental then what could mcgill and hammond have done to prevent them hey get off the mcgill hammond thing i m no fan of either my point is that last year the sharks had toughness that was missing this year this year we had more skill i m all for that but if your skill players keep getting beat up and injured they can t do you much good whether it s a cheap shot or not you can t let the other teams push you around the sharks simply got pushed around to much other teams knew this they knew they could aggressively check the sharks and not pay for it adding some players in the off season who will add some toughness to the team will help insure that next season other teams will be more hesistant to vigorously check our skill players or to take cheap shots it doesn t guarantee no injuries nothing does but it s something the sharks can do to reduce the number of injuries mark just say mark spiegel spiegel lmsc lockheed com cow palace k epicenter
