TOM PREISSING
This season: 22 games, 3 goals, 4 assists, 6 penalty minutes, 16:45 average ice time.
The good: Well, his blog on lakings.com was pretty entertaining for a while, right? In the best of times, Preissing can be a valuable power-play contributor (five of his seven points this season came with the man advantage) and even during tough times, he didn’t complain and remained a popular figure in the locker room before he eventually got sent to Manchester.
The bad: A mysterious bout with dizziness, coupled with ineffective play, led to Preissing playing only 22 games this season. That’s $125,000 per game played, which is pretty amazing. Preissing received his big four-year contract with the Kings after a strong season with Ottawa in 2006-07, when the Senators made the Stanley Cup Finals. It seems increasingly clear that Preissing simply was a better fit in Ottawa’s system.
Going forward: It’s not pretty. The Kings have Preissing under contract for two more seasons, at $2.75 million per season. If there’s one contract the Kings would like to get off the books, it’s this one, but they’re already paying two buyouts next season (Cloutier and McCauley), and Dean Lombardi would have to do quite a sell-job to get another GM to take that salary this summer. More than likely, it’s, “Hello, Manchester.”