Monday, March 27, 2006

Fly, Eagle, Fly

Ed Belfour is out for the rest of the year with a back injury. His backup, Mikael Tellqvist, has been playing pretty well as a starter in the meantime, and last night, his backup, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, played in his first game as a Leaf, and was named the first star. I only watched the last 4 minutes of the game, but the Devils had a two-man advantage for most of that time because of Leaf penalties plus pulling their goalie. They had all kinds of scoring chances, but Aubin kept them all out - other than one that he missed but Tomas Kaberle scooped away just before it went in.

I wonder if Leaf management will look at the performances of Aubin and Tellqvist and finally decide to buy out Belfour's contract and let him go. It makes fiscal sense too -- they'd need to pay Tellqvist either way, but Aubin doesn't make much, so the $1.5 million it will cost to buy out Belfour plus Aubin's salary is still way cheaper than the $4.5 million they'd have to pay Belfour. Given their play over the last couple of weeks plus Belfour's less-than-stellar play over the rest of this season, and the fact that Belfour is 41, it should be a no-brainer.

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