The Carolina Hurricanes putting Scott Darling on waivers Thursday afternoon might have come as a surprise, given their obvious and understandable propensity to avoid burying a $4 million annual expenditure in the minor leagues, but it was - as we pointed out on Sunday - a necessary step to take. What is striking, in retrospect, is that the single act of signing Darling to that large contract had so many downstream implications.
In fact, in thinking back through it, you could make the case that four people lost their jobs (either by their own action or by virtue of someone else making the decision for them) as a direct result of Ron Francis inking Darling to a four-year, $16.