and yea, this makes no sense whatsoever.

Yeah, I doubt this as well. Unless there’s an injury or something we haven’t heard about yet, this makes no sense. Greiss needs a chance, and DW would not have signed Niittymaki if he was going to do this.

Christ.

Maybe DW saw my mock expansion draft piece yesterday and thought it was actually happening.

This literally makes no sense.

…for making me do the Smoke Eater’s challenge. He better be there, if it happens.

Unbelievable

Why would he…? But didn’t Wilson..say?

AAAARRRGGGHHH

Please don’t be true…please don’t be true…

I don’t know about this yet, still don’t think DW is that contradictory.

best part about it would be that he took CHI to arbitration and then would have signed for less here if this happens. Granted it’s only 500K less, but still a discount.

Still don’t like this, as far as we know Niitty could be better than Niemi anyway.

Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. Whoever is between the pipes next season they’re gonna have a lot of work to do if we don’t upgrade the defensive corps. I just don’t see why we throw more money at the goaltending lineup.

Ye Gods, I’m hoping this isn’t true…

Efffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

This makes no sense.

I call E5 on this. And you all know what I mean by that (I don’t believe this until someone from the Sharks knocks on my door and tells me it’s true to my face)

NO NO NO NO NO NON NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!

Maybe we could use him on the D-line.

The only way this MIGHT make sense is if there’s a trade coming involving some of our younger goalies, maybe? Still seems odd.

Whyyy wtFFFF? What a slap in the face to Greiss AND Nittymaki…

cannot believe this is happening. makes no sense.

I guess this is just DW’s way of saying he’s given up on getting a top 4 defenseman. Any defenseman he might try to acquire before the trade deadline will be done via trade so he probably figures he doesn’t need much extra cap space.

I guess it kind of makes sense assuming the deal is only for 1 year. What else are we going to do with the cap space at this point?

THE SHARKS JUST BLEW UP WHILE I WAS SLEEPING WTF.
I AM NEVER SLEEPING IN AGAIN.

Seriously though, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THREE GOALIES?!

Sorry. Will stop with the capslock now. But as everyone else has said,
1. I was excited about watching Niittymaki.
2. Greiss needs a chance.
3. We need a Defenseman.
4. Waaah ):

What??? Okay someone explain to me how this makes sense?

DW must be going for an all Finnish lineup. Nittymaki, Sateri, and now this butterball Niemi? wow

This is the real deal, folks.

Okay I’ve read that a dozen times. Plus the fact that it’s TCY who posted it. Still stunned.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE GOALTENDING PIPELINE??!?!?

This is absurd. I mean, I know nearly everyone here has been brushing off the rumors as pure nonsense for most of the offseason, including myself. It just didn’t seem feasible or rational for us to sign Niemi, from a skill perspective, salary cap perspective, and based on DW’s insistence that Nitty was “our guy”. Ugh…this is so infuriating.

On the plus side, this has trade written all over it, as we’re left with nearly no cap space. I’ll defer passing judgment until this whole thing blows over.

because I don’t think it does plus all three of them can’t play at the same time!

How long is Nittymaki’s deal?

which is difficult for me any time, especially now…

- I never found a reason to personally dislike Niemi, except for him stoning our asses
- He might be more motivated than ever, especially after sort of being disrespected by the Hawks
- The contract sounds pretty damn good
- He is young—if he continues to bring it, it’d be nice to have him in net for a long time

And this happens?

Is this just part of screwing the Hawks? Maybe DW had a plan all along with his offer sheet? :D

What else were we going to do with our cap space this season? We can still trade Clowe/Murray/Huskins/whoever for a top 4 defenseman at the trade deadline and likely be ok on cap space.

With this move we’ve made an upgrade in net (potentially) and acquired a trade chip that we might be able to use later. We should still have enough cap space to acquire a top 4 guy assuming Clowe or Murray are sent off in the trade.

Why all the angst over Greiss? I don’t think he’s anything special. If we have no chance of upgrading our blueline until closer to the trading deadline, then I see nothing wrong with using our remaining cap space to upgrade the overall goalie talent. And I believe this does that.

I come home today after a 3 hour Stats exam, start heating up lunch, and grap my laptop. I open up the Internet, type fearthefin.com into the browser, hoping with anticipation and excitement that today will be the day I see a fanshot announcing we have traded for the Top-4 Dman I desperatley dream about. I see a fanshot get excited and Niemi crushes my soul again.

seriously?

Either MR. DW is going crazy becuase he couldn’t sign a d man or this was his master plan from the beginning. Or a trade is about to happen but I think signing Niemi is a good thing and I like this move since our d is really crappy.

David Pollak:

It does indeed look as if Antti Niemi will be in the Sharks net next season.

WOW.

it is happening because its on nhl, espn, here, wtc, so it is true. finally some good sharks news after a long long long time.

And testing whether it will get picked up by other news services….

It’s happened before…

This makes as much sense as the raiders bringing in matt leinert!So if we end up with both of these goalies how can we package them for Shea Webber or Ryan Suter?Not gonna happen.Is there any chance that this might be an ecklund rumor-if thats the case we have nothing to worry about.Niemi is not a bad goalie,but what happened to DW’s “NIttymaki was always the guy we wanted”?Like you guys said I’ll try to reserve judgement untill all is said and done-but at least its SOME hockey news!

In your face!

Signing Nolan has to happen now, after people stated it wouldnt happen. I couldnt give a shit about the other guy.

My feelings on this:

DW always says he’ll do whatever to make the team better. Perhaps the talent in the pipeline (Sateri, Sexy) werent as talented as billed and Stalock will need a few years. Greiss’ deal is two way and he hasnt played all that many games yet. Perhaps if him and Stalock split a few starts with Sateri and Sexy playing between Stockton and Kalamazoo this might be the best way to not have to rush our prospects.

and step TWO includes packaging Clowe/Nittymaki/cash for a top-4 D-man

There has to be a 3rd party. Most likely we would trade Greiss and Clowe out and get someone’s D-man in return.

The real question is..

Who’s D-man?

Coburn’s no slouch,and Philly could be in some cap trouble especially if they sighn Guerin.Gonna get mighty interesting here.

Walking an exceptional goalie for two GOOD goalies isn’t exactly what I thought was meant when we said “We need better D and Scoring depth.”

Still somewhat in “WTF?” mode.

I don’t expect any defense signings until February. The price is too high right now. And frankly, I don’t care because we’ll make playoffs regardless.

Now we have competition between the pipes and a goalie who can breathe for four rounds of playoffs.

Strange move, no doubt, but I was never a fan of Nitty signings. Now we have a Plan B, at least for the springtime.

I figure if everyone else can float shit, why can’t I ?

Clowe/Nittymaki for Sheldon Souray – Edmonton needs a goalie (well, a sober one that isn’t in the can) and they need a physical scorer. The money is pretty close.

Niemi is, by far, the last person on the face of the earth the Sharks needed to be signing. I would have been happier with the Sharks signing Chelios as our blueline upgrade than this.

First, Niemi is no better than who we already had. Niittymaki, Niemi, Griess would all most likely put up similar stats over a full season. And, realistically they did last year (all had similar SV%). His performance in the playoffs, outside of the San Jose series, was pedestrian at best. He had among the worst stats ever by a SC Winning goalie in the playoffs. He won his Cup because of the most amazing blueline ever and a deep, talented forward corps that could score enough to make up for his 3 GAA in the playoffs (outside of our series).

Next, if DW wanted to spend 4 million on goalies in the FA market, he could have spent it on EVGENI NABOKOV! I’m sure he would have stayed on at 5 million, which would totally fit under the Cap at this point if you subtracted Niitty and Niemi. The point, I thought, in letting Nabby walk was that the Sharks wanted to spend the Cap space on a better blueline! Not more goaltending! Ugh.

This just makes so little sense on so many levels.

The only way this makes sense is if a team called and wanted Greiss as part of a trade for a blueline upgrade. Then I can accept signing Niemi as Niitty’s backup. Otherwise, I am completely stumped as to why DW would spend more money to bring in an inferior goaltender.

Keep your head gear tight.

From Brodie Brazil .

Niemi has not signed with #sjsharks, multiple offers surround him. #nhl

I am guessing that a certain organization has asked Brodie to not fuel the fire and that they will announce this in due time…

wha wha WHAT?

Im really hoping there is a bigger picture here that we all cant see. Im really torn on my feelings for this. The blueline is what needs to be addressed not our goaltenders. Please surprise me DW.

Here.

If nothing else it proves that any tv program with Brodie Brazil and Ratto has got to never happen again,Brodie couldnt wait to jump out of his seat to add fuel to the fire.A guy like that belongs on tmz.