Tony Amonte doesn’t become an unrestricted free agent until July 1, but he no longer figures in the Blackhawks’ plans.
“For all intents and purposes he’s gone,” Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz told the Tribune on Thursday. “We’ve been planning on going without him. I don’t know if we’ll add one player or several to replace him. We will have a better team next year than we had this year–I know that for sure.”
Wirtz believes the Hawks’ captain and right wing will be signed by the Dallas Stars. “We hear Dallas is looking at Tony and also Bill Guerin (the Boston right wing who also will become an unrestricted free agent July 1),” Wirtz said. “I think the deal has been done already, but it’s tampering if anything is done before July 1 so nobody is saying anything. We hear eight or nine players already have agreed to sign and he’s one of them.”
“Everybody else has him going to New York to the Rangers or Islanders. I wish Tony well wherever he goes. It really is a shame. Tony is a good kid; he just has a bad agent.”
Amonte and his agent, Mike Gillis, were unavailable for comment Thursday.
According to Wirtz, the only offer the Hawks have received from Gillis was made in May 2001 when he asked for a five-year deal that would have been worth $9.35 million annually if all bonuses were achieved.
Amonte’s current contract pays him $3.4 million yearly with no incentives.
Neither Wirtz nor Amonte have been directly involved in the bargaining. Senior Vice President Bob Pulford and general manager Mike Smith have been doing the negotiating with Gillis.
After Smith’s offer of a $15.8 million three-year extension was turned down, the sides agreed in late November to wait until after the season ended before making any new offers. As of Thursday, neither side had made an overture.
Dallas owner Tom Hicks is reportedly willing to pay Guerin, who is getting $5.1 million from the Bruins, and Amonte yearly salaries of $9 million and $7.5 million, respectively.
After scoring a career-high 44 goals in 1998-99, Amonte’s goals have declined to 43, 35 and then 27 last season, when he had 39 assists. In the six seasons before 2001-2002, Amonte averaged 37 goals and 35 assists.
Amonte also extended his consecutive games streak to 410, longest among active players in the NHL.
“We were in the $5.5 to $6 million range, and that’s not good enough for them,” Wirtz said. “No way either Tony or Jeremy Roenick (the ex-Hawk who left Phoenix as an unrestricted free agent last July 2 to accept an $8.5 million offer from Philadelphia) is worth $7.5 million. Five years at $9,350,000 [including bonuses] for a player of Tony’s age (32 on Aug. 2) who scored 27 goals last year is ludicrous. It’s funny money–Monopoly money–not real money. The teams paying that kind of money don’t know what real money is.
“The Blackhawks are free and clear of debt. I’m not going to sell stock [personal holdings] to keep players. We signed Alex Zhamnov (the team’s highest-paid player) for $4 million, and I think Alex is a better player than Tony. Alex probably could have gotten an extra million, but he wanted to stay in Chicago.”
Hawks coach Brian Sutter agreed with Wirtz that the Hawks can be better next season, even without Amonte.
“[General manager Mike Smith] has some ideas,” Sutter said. “Mike is the type of guy who doesn’t horse around. He surprised everybody by what he did last summer.”
Smith signed several midlevel free agents, most notably defenseman Jon Klemm.
One move this summer may be a trade for Florida winger Valeri Bure. The Panthers are rumored to be shopping the oft-injured little brother of Pavel. Last season, Bure played only 31 games and scored eight goals. The most games Bure has played in a season–80 and 82–came when he played for Sutter in Calgary. In those two seasons, Bure scored 26 and 35 goals.
“I can think of a lot of guys who had their best years under me,” Sutter said. “Valeri is a highly skilled guy.”
Even more appealing to the Hawks is that Bure, 28, is signed for the next two seasons at $2.9 million and $3.1 million.
For Wirtz, the Amonte situation is reminiscent of the NHL’s war with the World Hockey Association and the 1972 decision of superstar Bobby Hull to leave the Hawks to accept a $1 million offer from Winnipeg of the new league.
“We offered Bobby $250,000 a year for five years, but he signed with the other league,” Wirtz said. “We had contracts with Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito coming up and we couldn’t afford to pay Bobby that kind of money and also give them that kind of money.
“The WHA teams then were doing exactly what some NHL teams are doing now. Those economics led to the demise of the WHA.
“Two years ago [NHL] teams lost a total of $278 million. I don’t care what business it is–that can’t go on. You can’t have teams like Buffalo go busted. We’ll see what happens in 2004 [when the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NHL Players’ Association expires]. Players now are getting 69 percent of all revenue and 83 percent of all new revenue. It’s a sucker deal.
“In 2004 we’ll go for a cost-certain basis where no club can lose money. If we don’t have a cost-certain basis, the Blackhawks will still be here in the future but with less teams [in the NHL] and fewer jobs. We’re out of suckers, and [the] time is coming when everybody is going to have to start playing with real money.”
