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Dateline: March 21/02

Pavel Bure is hockey's best goal scorer and most explosive player. How much is that worth in 2002?

After this week there are two answers to that question:

1) $10 million a year.

2) Not as much as you think.

When examined in detail, the two answers aren't as contradictory as they appear.

1) Pavel Bure has scored more goals than anyone else in the NHL over the last two seasons. He can outfox almost any opponent while dangling the puck on his stick and his top-speed breakaways are a sight to behold. He makes $10 million, the going rate for NHL superstars.

2) The Florida Panthers, who gave Pavel Bure his current contract, recently decided that the investment was not panning out. The Panthers are a bad team and there are no quick fixes that will send them to the top of the league anytime soon. If they can't even make the playoffs, it makes little sense to lay out $125,000 per game for one right winger, no matter how dazzling his moves.

Far better to put him on the trading block, watch the bidding war escalate and take the juiciest offer. Surely an NHL star of Bure's stature would fetch a package of draft picks, good prospects and a serviceable veteran or two.

As it turned out, the best offer the Panthers got was from the New York Rangers: two draft picks, an old unwanted defenseman and a promising 19-year-old named Filip Novak. They took it, making the trade on Tuesday night. Novak might be a gem, we won't know for another five years. Still, it's not much of a return for a game-breaker in his prime.

Which brings us back to the $10 million. About a dozen NHL teams can afford to carry that kind of salary. Half of them are in the same straits as Florida. Several others, like Colorado, have enough scoring. The market for Pavel Bure was very small. The Panthers painted themselves into a corner when they gave Pavel his fat contract. In the end, they got less for him than they gave up to get him in 1999. Bure's years in Florida can be written off as a poorly conceived, very expensive experiment that failed miserably on all counts.

Now Bure moves on to Madison Square Garden, where they could write a book on expensive failure. Will his talent be put to better use by the Rangers? "They don't look on it as spending money on players," said Paul Grant of the Sporting News. "They look on it as providing content for their TV network."

Pavel Bure is great content. But does $10 million a year buy the foundation of a future championship? As the Florida Panthers found out, that is a much trickier question.