As there was no Nuggets today and I figured this topic might have been broached there, I thought I'd do a fanpost about it. Is anyone else a little pissed at what the Bruins just got away with there trading Tim Thomas? I know the Islanders are cheap and all, but they essentially let one of the big spenders in the league off the hook for their salary cap transgressions. This almost feels like when the Habs took Scott Gomez off the Rangers hands, essentially giving Sather a free pass for one of his 3 major bonehead signings(Wade Redden and Chris Drury were the others).

It feels to me like a case of the rich getting richer. Like the days in pre free agency baseball when the Yankees would raid teams like the St Louis Browns for their young talent and just drop a load of money on them for their efforts. This just feels like a loophole that should have been closed in the CBA, yet here we are, less than 2 months into it and we've already got teams pulling at the loose strings seeing what they can get away with.

I knew that this would happen one of these days, but it really only makes sense that Charles Wang would be the perpetrator. I figure you're going to have the cheap, cap floor teams buying these long retirement contracts for used up star players in about 3 or 4 years now. Wait until the Isles acquire a guy like Marian Hossa or Roberto Luongo as their salary starts bottoming out for the sake of their cap hits.

I find since the Senators do seem to be the closest competitor to catching the Bruins it just annoys me to see them constantly strengthened by teams in their own conference. The Leafs have fortified them greatly by gifting them Tuuka Rask and the Phil Kessel trade, recently voted the best trade in Boston sports history. Even Zdeno Chara ending up with Boston from the Sens is always a sore point. I know Chiarelli is a decent GM, but the guy must be able to sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves.

And to end this rant, I'll just throw this conspiracy theory out there. What are the odds that this was a ploy all along by the Bruins and Thomas? What if Thomas wanted to retire all along, but they cooked up this plan to circumvent Thomas' mandatory cap hit. He would say he's "taking a year off" and not be paid to play, but the cap hit would still apply. Then they'd look for a team who would take the flyer that Thomas, at 39 years old would play next year. I think without the phrasing of "taking a year off" there would have been no trade and they simply would have been stuck with the dead cap space.