Details Emerge On Why The Kings Terminated Mike Richards' Contract And You Probably Could Guess Why
Puck Daddy – While the NHL on NBC Sports analyst [Pierre McGuire] didn’t get into the hard details on TSN 690’s Melnick in the Afternoon show in Montreal, McGuire indicated the incident that led to the Kings decision happened at a border crossing.
Melnick: “Somebody in the know is telling me something happened with Mike Richards at a border crossing.”
Pierre: “Correct … I’m not going to talk about it until it’s made public. I have a pretty good idea of what’s happened.”
Melnick: “So the information I have, you can confirm that?”
Pierre: “Your information is probably pretty accurate.”
From Yesterday: Kings Terminate Mike Richards’ Contract For “Material Breach” Whatever The Hell That Means
The more details that start to come out from the story, the juicier it’s going to get. But at the moment, all we’re really aware of is that Mike Richards was involved in a “border incident” right before the draft on Friday. Now as much as I hate to speculate (jk, I love to speculate) you have to imagine that with Mike Richards’ history as a party animal, that this “incident” involves a little bit of the booger sugar. And the timing couldn’t have been worse for Richards/better for the Kings.
Like I said yesterday, the Kings were already planning on using a buyout on Richards. He still has 5 years remaining on his $69 million contract (LOL 69) and he was getting paid to ride the bus in the AHL last season. If you don’t think the only reason why the Kings would exercise this right to terminate his contract now is because of how much money it would save them, then you’re an idiot. A lot of people yesterday were making a Jarret Stoll comparison. The only thing wrong with that is that Stoll becomes a UFA tomorrow so the Kings didn’t necessarily need to do anything special to clean their hands of him. You can, however, make a comparison to Slava Voynov still having a job with the Los Angeles Kings. I get the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing exists here in America but in my books, Slava is a guilty AF scumbag Russian. Yet he’s still under contract. Why? Well because his contract isn’t complete dog shit and if he does return, he can still produce as a very serviceable defenseman. With Richards, the Kings saw the perfect opportunity to get out of paying a guy who they see as useless, aside from paying a cap recapture penalty, and they pounced. It’s a super shady move and not to be too cliche, but it’s where you really see the NHL as a business.
Advertisement
I’m not gonna say that Mike Richards won the Kings 2 Stanley Cups. He played a big role in their run in 2012 but kind of just collected a ring in 2014. Either way, he was on the only two Kings teams to win a Stanley Cup and now they’re just taking him out back and throwing him in the garbage. You can’t blame them since it’s a great business decision, but it’s definitely a scumbag move and 100% comes down to timing and Richards’ contract over anything else. The whole ordeal is still far from over there so getcha popcorn ready.
This is relevant:
