Help Wanted

A couple of days ago, I ripped the Wolves for trading Trenton Hassel for Greg Buckner, and things got a little testy in the comments section. The facts that I presented surrounding Buckner's contract were questioned, and to be fair, those details make all the difference. If the Wolves did indeed trade Hassell for a player whose contract they can dump a year earlier, power to them, even if he is three years older.

For the record, I got my info from usatoday.com, where they list nba salaries and contracts. They claim that Buckner's contract goes a year longer than Hassell's and that it's the player's option. On the other hand, Patricia Bender's excellent site seems to indicate the the contracts end the same year, and that Buckner's has a team option, which is a critical difference.

I'm going to assume that Bender's site (and the contract info reported by the PiPress) is correct, because otherwise, the trade would either be overwhelmingly stupid or... well, maybe something even be uglier. The fact that Buckner is $750,000 cheaper for this year can't help but make me wonder - was this done to save some nickels and dimes for this year?

Of course, the problem is that I can't get a straight answer on any of the questions that naturally arise, like "What is the Wolves salary level this year?" I can tell you that the NBA salary cap is at $55.63M, and that if I add up the salaries from espn.com's Wolves roster, it equals $55.16M. Which makes it looks like Hassell's salary would have put them over the cap, resulting in a luxury tax. But I don't know if all that money on that page really counts against the cap, or if more than that counts against the cap, or what.

The same problem existed tonight when I wanted to talk about the Wild and their season opener. The Wild look like a team that Twins fans should enjoy, given their philosophy of buuilding a young core of talent in the minors and slowly integrating them into the NHL for an extended run of success.

But is all this talk of young talent a bunch of hooey? Are they rated highly by national publications? The first two links returned from a Google search of "top NHL minor league prospects" were links to baseball prospects. The next link looks promising - for those willing to pay $12/month. Another site has two Wild prospects in the top 50, but one is the new backup goalie and the other is #47 and was a little dissappointing last year. However, they're ranked as having the 7th best minors in the NHL. Of course, this is all by the same (and totally unknown to me) source.

It isn't clear that these sports have found the intersection of entertainment and information that baseball has. But I'm determined to start putting some of these together so we have more to go by than corporate media.

So I'm asking for help. If you have some favorite sites for basketball, football or hockey, even if they're super wonkish and geeky, please let me know about them in the comments below. And while your at it, if you see any MN professional sports blogs or news that aren't included in our feeds on MNGameDay.com, by all mean let me know.

Don't worry, we'll get back to baseball soon. It's still my passion. But as we move through baseball's offseason, I'll also try to use these new links to get a level deeper into some of these other sports, too.

Thanks,
John