mr grieves said:
BlueWhiteBlood said:
Corn Flake said:
It is kind of silly to be so heavily influenced on whether one likes a player or not based on how much money he makes.
I find that is what happens with Phaneuf. I know this is not the thread for this, but to answer your point, maybe having sites like Cap Geek compounds this.
Maybe. I'd think it also has a lot to do with having a salary cap...
Still, I remember people being deeply offended by Robert Reichel's salary, so there's surely an element of silly moralizing.
I think it has a lot to do with expectation. When you negotiate a contract the player says "im worth this much because I believe im a first line center. " there is a level expectation that goes along with that. If I buy a big mac get home and find only a piece of lettuce in the box; im going to hate that big mac. (I love big macs and Mcd's for the record) If the team pays a player like a 1st line center and he ends up on the 4th or worse is left there and still plays like a 4th; fans start to hate that player. Then comes the next part...everyone now knows this player is garbage and way overpaid...sometimes you can get a naive GM to pick up the player hoping a change of scenery will do him good. Sometimes it works. Problem now is we live in Cap World. Meaning the list of GMs capable of doing this without going over the cap is much smaller. So now more then ever you are stuck with that player. At least I can eat the lettuce pretend its good and then go make something else.
As silly as it may seem the pre-cap era wasn't an era of unlimited money. Owners were still only willing to pay so much because they still wanted to make some profit. So there was always a theoretical, imaginary but yet real cap. So people not liking Reichel because he made too much money is more like people not liking him because he said he was going to play like this....then they, right or wrong, believed he did not play like "this" Not at all. So they were mad. (I just wanted someone better then him, I didnt hate him at all for the record)
tl;dr : People hate things that dont live up to expectations. These are expectations the players made themselves.