Yet another NHL player has been removed from the list of this summer’s potential unrestricted free agents.
The Dallas Stars have re-signed center Mike Ribeiro to a five-year, $25 million contract extension.
Ribeiro was acquired by the Stars at the start of the 2006-07 season from the Montreal Canadiens and has seen his career flourish since arriving in the Lone Star State.
Last season Ribeiro led a low-scoring Stars club in team scoring with 59 points in 81 games, his second-best single-season total at that time.
But it’s this season where the 27-year-old Ribeiro has shone, with 21 goals and 44 points in 40 games. He’s already topped his career best for goals in a season and is well on his way toward a career high 41 goals and 87 points.
Clearly, leaving the harsh spotlight of Montreal has done Ribeiro a world of good. During his final two seasons with the Canadiens he showed signs of his offensive potential, with 65 and 51 points respectively.
However, there were reports in the Montreal press of Ribeiro, along with then-teammates Jose Theodore and Pierre Dagenais, enjoying the Montreal nightlife too much and creating some friction amongst their teammates.
Regardless of whether or not those stories were true it was clear by September 2006 that Ribeiro and the Canadiens would part ways.
In Dallas, Ribeiro hasn’t had to worry about being hounded by a voracious media as interested in his personal life as in his professional one. He’s fit in very well with linemate Brendan Morrow, giving the Stars a lethal offensive punch.
More importantly, Ribeiro appears to have gained a maturity that was lacking during his days with the Canadiens, showing more attention to the defensive side of the game as well as the offensive. He’s also ditched a rather annoying habit of taking dives to draw penalties.
But as well as he’s played in the regular season, Ribeiro hasn’t had much post-season success, with only 8 points in 24 NHL post-season games, and now that he’s become the Stars top offensive forward he’ll face considerable pressure to step up his playoff performance.
It could also be argued that the Stars are taking a bit o####amble paying Ribeiro such a hefty contract ($5 million per season) for such a long time, as he’s never scored beyond 65 points prior to this season.
Certainly there’s no guarantee that he'll match or exceed this season's expected totals in the future, but if the Stars didn’t pay that kind of money, another team would’ve if he’d hit the UFA market this summer.
With long-time Stars forward Mike Modano now clearly in the twilight of his career, the Stars simply couldn’t afford not to pay “Mickey Ribs” that kind of cash.
Kind of a BIG gamble at 5 mil a year don't ya think???? Hard to imagine he is getting comparable money to some of the top players out there because of one good year
I think this is risky, but necessary, for Dallas. Let's face it, as Lyle hinted at, Modano is headed out to pasture soon, and getting a young potential number one center is hard to do. I'm certainly not comparing them, but I'd suggest anyone lambasted by the Montreal media deserves a fair shot. If it were up to the Montreal papers, Lecavalier and Briere should be labeled the French version of Benedict Arnold, and it's nonsense.
The playoff issues should not be overlooked, as Dallas has been prone to suffering some notable chokes in the past. That said, sometimes really good regular season players are just that, really good regular season players, and that's okay when you've got the right mix. As to the financial implications, sorry, but it's not a huge deal to me. With the salary cap rising and offer sheets becoming a very real threat, $5 mil might look like a steal a year or two down the line. And here I thought I'd never give Brett Hull credit for anything.
ribeiro is getting paid commensurate with his performance. i thought he could be a cornerstone of montreal's rebuilding, but instead he is getting the same chance with dallas.
i am disappointed that montreal was unable to keep ribeiro in line. i can't believe that he was such a party animal. he is married with four kids. between koivu, gainey and carbo, perhaps someone could have kept him more on the straight and narrow, if that was the problem. as far as taking dives, that should have been easily corrected in the dressing room. the veterans should have addressed that issue with him in private.
great job by dallas of trading a 7th defenseman for an unwanted player and turning him into a top 20 scorer.
Maturity has a lot to do with Ribeiro's improvement. In Montreal he was talented but his immaturity at times spilled out, most notoriously in the 2004 playoffs when he faked a serious injury and then laughed at the Bruin assessed a penalty from the Habs bench. And as good as he was offensively backchecking appeared a foreign concept to him.
In Dallas, that's changed. Even he admitted that the shock of being dealt from Montreal changed him and made him work harder. He backchecks now and pays more attention to defensive details, and he's no longer diving to draw penalties. That's maturity.
Sometimes as they say a change is as good as a rest and in Ribeiro's case it worked well for him. I hope he continues to build on this season's performance and can start turning up his post-season play too.
i agree that ribeiro matured last season. the next step, as a high paid player, will be, as you said, to deliver in the post season.
ribiero has been a good linemate, most of his wingers - Ryder, Dagenais and now Morrow and Miettinen have all had above average seasons playing with him. in a nutshell, that's what hull saw in him and why it pained me to see him leave.
leadership, both on and off the ice has a huge impact on the maturity curve of their players. montreal's best raw talents of the past decade have fell off that maturity curve. i hope that gainey recognizes this as his many youngsters like Latendresse, Price and Kostitsyn are also subject to the same pressures to which Ribeiro and Theodore succumbed.
Fortunately those young Habs you noted aren't facing quite the same pressure that Theodore and Ribeiro faced during their tenure in Montreal. Back then, the Canadiens had very little depth and few stars so when those two showed promise they faced extreme expectations to start carrying the team right away.
Now, the Habs have considerably more depth than they did a few years ago, so there's less pressure on Latendresse and Price to start playing like stars right away. As for Andrei Kostitsyn it appears this season that he's emerging as a scoring star, while his younger brother Sergei has played very well since his call-up a few weeks ago and appears to have cemented a spot on the roster.
With Komisarek, Higgins and Plekanec now full-fledged stars and stepping into leadership roles, that takes some of the spotlight off the other developing youngsters allowing them a little less pressure to perform.
Yeah, it's risky, but it's not like Dallas has a choice. This is really all Kevin Lowe's fault. Before Lowe's insane offer sheets, the going rate was around $4 mil per season (Horton and Whitney). After the Vanek and Penner offers, everything has been higher (Getzlaf, Richards).
Overall, I like the deal. He is a solid players. Plus, this is really not as crazy as the Mike Richrds deal. Richards has never scored more than 34 points prior to this season. At least, Ribeiro had 3 solid seasons prior to this one.
i was going to post a comment that i felt it more appropriate for price to develop in the AHL, but that point is moot.
goalie for habs is one of the most high pressure jobs in the nhl. an entire generation of fans has been raised believing that with the right goalie, any habs roster can (and should) win a Cup. coupled with Huet's pending free agency, it was a lot for Price to manage.
Gainey has made a very wise move to develop and preserve a great potential talent. he also improves montreal's near term playoff chances. he has alleviated the concerns i expressed in my prior post. as an aside, i should also give Gainey credit for sitting down with Kovalev in the off-season.
To the Richards point, maybe I'm sipping the Holmgren Kool-Aid, but I don't find the deal that outrageous. Locking up your core to long-term deals is just a smart business move under the new CBA, especially for franchises that traditionally spend a lot of coin. It's not like he wouldn't get that and more on a year-by-year basis with the salary cap rising anyway. It's certainly a valid point that it's a risk, but watch any Flyers game this season and you'll clearly see Richards' game is not just translated in the offense on the stat sheet. This is the type of center you build around, good in all situations and both ends of the ice and showing a spark that was badly lacking on the roster last year. I firmly believe that there is a time coming soon when we'll look at that deal and say.."Nice job."
Don't underestimate the need for Dallas to have some solid youth to build around. It's the most difficult commodity to obtain in this league for obvious reasons. Whatever the cause of Ribiero's transformation, this sent a message to the fanbase that they should have a reason to come to the rink not named Modano.
Count me as crazy, cause I like the Richards deal. Stastical improvement can't possibly always be seen on the same scale, because when a guy is in just his second or third year, there's no way to compare that to a freshman campaign. Definitely not so with Richards, who toiled away on an awful team. Watch any Flyers game this season and you'll immediately see why Richards got that deal, and it's only partly to do with scoring. He leads the team in every situation, is an unbelievable shorthanded scoring threat, and plays with a ton of tenacity and grit. I can't say it isn't a risk, and I agree that Lowe set the bar, but using the league's going rate factored over the life of the deal I think it's right in line (if not cheaper) than what he'd get on the open market. I don't think it will be a bust at all.
I'm Lyle Richardson, also known as Spector, Foxsports.com 's "Prince of Pucks".,which is based on the fact I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada and I couldn't think of a better byline. I've been an NHL hockey commentator since 1998 on my website, Spector's Hockey, and I'm a contributing writer for Foxsports.com , The Hockey News and Eishockey News. I'm also a regular on The Faceoff Hockey Show and a frequent guest on "The Late Crew" on The Team 1200 Ottawa.
