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Last night, perhaps while you were sleeping, the Flyers and Wayne Simmonds signed a 6 year contract extension. Good for both of them! And I’m sure they had to do it at night, because they were spending their day negotiating the new labor agreement.

Oh, yeah, the labor agreement. You know the one where the teams were trying to cap deals at 5 years? That one? And most teams, clearly, are pretty worked up over the situation, given that, by my count, Simmonds signed the 312th contract that was longer than 5 years this offseason.

I would love to touch upon the hockey sense this move made (not a whole lot. The Flyers need to shore up the blue line. Simmonds is a good player, but not where Philadelphia should be focusing their money right now) but I can’t escape the hypocrisy of arguing for one thing and doing exactly the opposite of that less than 24 hours later. I can’t take the owner’s seriously if they are going to keep giving out deals like this, right up until the last possible second.

If nothing else, the preponderance of deals exceeding 5 years especially this close to the expiration of the current CBA pisses all over the pretense of honest negotiations.

Ice Insiders Chris Berry Interactive Chris Berry Interactive