Unrestricted Free Agency Open Thread

Happy Dominion Canada Day, Canadians! In honor of your holiday, I will suspend my nationalistic sense of superiority and talk about hockey while you party.

As you may know, today marks the official beginning of unrestricted free agency for the 2012-13 NHL lockout season. It is the time of year when general managers, under pressure to succeed despite the fact that hockey is a team game, spend large amounts of money on individuals despite the extreme unlikelihood that investment will ever recoup itself in terms of production.

This silliness is allowed to go on because humans are by nature optimists, happy to delude themselves into the lie that their team is one player away from success to justify their spending money in support of that team. And if you think I'm just talking about other people, admit it: You think Justin Schultz would solve all of Ottawa's problems. And if you refuse to admit you think that, you're just a cynical jerk who think that Erik Karlsson is overrated because he didn't score nine points against the Rangers in the playoffs.

Luckily, Senators GM Bryan Murray has dropped hints he won't be too active today. So, you can expect the announcement that the Senators have signed Jaromir Jagr to a 4-year, $24M deal within the hour.

While you are waiting for that deal to go down, feel free to hang out with us here. You can talk about how Zach Parise isn't worth $8M a year, or express frustration when Ottawa doesn't trade for Bobby Ryan even though they totally could have matched that price!

We'll be here all day, so first... we have to get pumped for a silly day.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Who else here is listening to Ozzy Osbourne and a-ha, Take Me On The Crazy Train to pump up for this day?!?!

Now, if you're pumped and not too drunk, hang out with us!



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