Oilers Sign Penner to Offer Sheet

It was just reported on tsn.ca that Kevin Lowe has tendered an offer sheet to RFA Dustin Penner and he has signed it. At a price of $21.5M over 5 years, it's kind of deal Penner couldn't pass up and the kind of offer that the Ducks may be forced to pass over.

Anaheim only has $2M in cap space at the moment with their $7M dollar defenseman still pondering whether he will retire or not. Brian Burke has stated he will match any offers to Penner but what GM would say "Offer away, we won't match."

The compensation to the Ducks would be a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round pick. So Burke has some interesting options to weigh as we all wait for the profanity-laced press conference that will come once Burke has made his decision.

Pitkanen Signs One-Year Deal

Joni Pitkanen has signed a one-year, $2.4M deal with the Oilers. So in return trading away their long-time captain and one of the other pieces of the Pronger trade, they were able to secure an offensive defenceman who has yet to realize his potential and will be a free agent again next year.

That has to be a bit disheartening to the Oilers and probably the Oilers fans. They've got an offensive blueliner in Souray, who had a career year he likely won't match, locked up long-term and now another offensive blueliner who has untapped potential, but he's only locked up for a season.

That's bass-ackwards if you ask me.

Aebischer Signs One-Year Contract with Coyotes

David Aebischer has signed on with the Phoenix Coyotes for the upcoming season. It's the third team for the 29-year old after stints with the Colorado Avalanche and Montreal Canadiens. With the Avalanche he posted respectable numbers until the blueline crumbled. He was then shipped to Montreal for fellow fledgling goaltender Jose Theodore. Both goaltenders joined the .300+ club which is definitely not a club you strive to join.

I haven't seen any confrimation on salary but have read that it's $600,000. That is a big step down from his previous salary but it's a chance for Aebischer to prove his mettle as a #1 goaltender. He'll be battling it out with Mikael Tellqvist for that position as well.

I'm actually surprised at the low salary. Even though Aebischer hasn't shown himself to be worth much more, the Coyotes are still trying to crack the minimum salary defined by the cap. Plus they have enough players under contact at the moment to ice on opening night. So it should be interesting to see what they have planned.

Senators Swap Schaefer for Shean Donovan

The Ottawa Senators made some news this morning as they traded Peter Schaefer to the Bruins in exchange for Shean Donovan. Schaefer is signed for 3 years at $6.7M while Donovan has just one year left with a hit of $925,000. For all intents and purposes, this looks to be nothing more than a salary dump to make way for re-signing Ray Emery.

The extra $1M in cap space should go a long way to this re-signing. If they can now manage to trade Gerber, they should be comfortable signing Heatley to an extension before the season is out. And you have to believe Heatley is going to command top dollar after 2 straight 50-goal seasons.

Michel Therrien Signs Extension

The Pittsburgh Penguins have signed head coach Michel Therrien to an extension that should see him behind the bench through the 08-09 season. After taking the reigns from Ed Olcyzk following a dismal start to the 05-06 season, Therrien allowed the Pens to finish that dismal start and decided to start fresh in 06-07.

Therrien helped guided the Penguins through an excellent 06-07 season where they essentially reversed their win/loss totals and found themselves in the playoffs for the first time since '01. The first-round of the playoffs exposed the inexperience level of the team and they got bounced by the Stanley Cup finalist Ottawa Senators in 5 games.

Some may argue that the injection of super-rookies Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal along with continued improvement from other young guns such as Ryan Whitney, Sidney Crosby and Marc-Andre Fleury were a bigger contributer than Therrien. Along with veterans such as Mark Recchi and Gary Roberts around along with Sergei Gonchar, who did some conversion services for Evgeni Malkin, the Pens had a good lineup of young guns, old stars and grit players.

There were also rumblings that Therrien was holding Crosby down a bit by refusing to play him late in games when it really mattered and giving him less ice-time than you'd expect. However it's always easy to blame the coach for any ill that is seen on the ice and I'm reluctant to do so.

This is pretty much the last piece for the Penguins to getting a mini-dynasty going on and, though I'm not a Penguins fan, I'm excited to see what they can do next season.

Sheldon Souray Signs with the Oilers

Sheldon Souray has agreed to terms with the Edmonton Oilers so we can finally put to rest any and all rumours about where he may be headed. Admittedly it was a bit strange that he wasn't snapped up within the first 2 or 3 days of free agency but you can somewhat understand the reason teams were reluctant.

While putting up big numbers with a booming point shot, he isn't the most defensive minded defenceman out there and is often made to look like a fool in one-on-one situations. However the Oilers made it clear that they were looking for defensive help and couldn't find any takers on the trade market after the Pitkanen deal.

With Souray and Pitkanen on the blueline, the Oilers will certainly have upgraded their powerplay unit. The question is whether they have degraded the overall defensive quality of their blueline.

Brent Sutter to Coach the Devils?

TSN is reporting that Brent Sutter may very well be stepping down as head coach and GM of the Red Deer Rebels to take the head coaching position of the New Jersey Devils. If this is true, it just may be a coach that lasts throughout the entire season for the Devils.

Sutter coached Team Canada to back-to-back World Junior championships - while not knowing the term "defeat" - and has led his Red Deer Rebels to success in the WHL over the past 10 years. He has gathered three 1st place finishes in the Central Division, 3 births to the Finals and was able to hoist the Memorial Cup in '01.

Along with all this he had the opportunity to coach his son Brandon right into the NHL as the Carolina Hurricanes choose him with the 11th overall choice on the 2007 entry draft.

I think it's fairly obvious that all that is left for Brent is to land in the NHL and chase the cup again, albeit from a slightly different perspective this time. Let's hope Lou doesn't have him whacked before the season can end.

Lundqvist Signs One-Year Deal

Henrik Lundqvist and the New York Rangers have agreed to terms on a one-year, $4.25M deal. I know a lot of people were expecting - or hoping - for a $3M deal but you had to know that was a pipe dream. You know what else was a pipe dream? Getting all these guys signed under the cap amount. As it stands, the Rangers sit with ($1.399M) in cap space. Those parentheses...that's accountant speak for "negative".

They currently are over the cap and need to bring themselves under. And did anyone mention that they still don't have a full roster? There are rumours of sending Kasparaitus down to the minors which would free up almost $3M in cap space. That would allow them to sign Avery for about $1.6M and be right at the cap. The only problem there is they still need a couple more forwards to fill out their offense.

EDIT: Ok, so after reading on some other boards it appears the Rangers have more cap space than most people think. If you assume that Kasparaitus goes to the AHL - or gets suspended after refusing the assignment - and they defer Shanahan's bonuses to next season, they have $3.23M available. That should be enough to sign Avery, Hossa and maybe one more depth forward to fill up the roster. It does mean that Shanahan's bonuses will likely count against next years cap which is obviously not ideal but if the cap goes up again, they should be all right.

And they need to hope that Marc Staal is a stud on the blue line this coming season.

Shanahan Signs with Rangers

Brendan Shanahan has signed a deal this afternoon that will keep him with the New York Rangers. Terms have not yet been released but it is likely a one-year contract and the rumour is that it will be an incentive laden deal with a discounted salary. It is confirmed that the deal is for $2.5M with an additional $2.8M bonus structure. The first $2M bonus is for playing in at least 10 games this coming season and the rest are related to playoff performance.

The Rangers already made a huge splash in signing both Chris Drury and Scott Gomez. With Shanahan on board, the Rangers will have two excellent offensive lines this upcoming season since, in case you didn't know, they have Jaromir Jagr as their franchise wingman.

The only question is how close to the Cap the Rangers end up being after this signing. Since Shanahan signed for $2.5M, that leaves them with $5.6M in cap space. At the moment they only have 10 forwards signed according to nhlnumbers.com and of course have yet to re-sign #1 goaltender Henrik Lundqvist and uber-pest Sean Avery.

I think it's a safe bet that Henrik alone could take up most of that remaining cap space leaving $1M or $2M to fill out the roster. So what will the Rangers do?

Sydney Crosby Signs Five Year Extension

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Sydney Crosby agreed to a five year, $43.5M contract extension this morning. His cap hit this season will still be $850,000+bonuses but starting next year, he's a 9 million dollar man (or close enough anyways). After winning the Art Ross and Hart trophies in only his second year of play, it's an obvious move on the part of the Penguins.

Crosby was said to be pushing the Penguins to give him assurances that Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal would remain vital cogs in the Penguins re-birth. Crosby is smart enough to realize that no matter how great a player he is, he needs a supporting cast to head for the Cup. With a trio down the middle of Crosby, Malkin and Staal, they're well on their way.

This signing was rumoured for a while and isn't much of a shock, particularly after the Vanek offer sheet. There is no way Pittsburgh wouldn't have matched whatever a team threw at Crosby and you can almost guarantee a team would throw the league max of just over $10M.

The Birth of Ice Chat

For the last couple weeks I've been wrestling with starting a site dedicated to hockey news in general. I've got my Avalanche Talk site which I will most certainly put most of my writing efforts towards, but I often find that I've got one of those darn things called "opinions" on a lot of the happenings in the hockey world. The question I had was whether I would be able to devote enough time to keeping on top of things and I've come to the conclusion that I will.

The usual answer I give when somebody says "I don't have the time to do XYZ" is "No, you just don't want to allocate the time to it". So I gave myself a taste of my own medicine and decided that I will find time within my day to cover off some of the happenings in not just the NHL but the AHL, CHL (Canadian Hockey League, not Central) and possibly even some college and international stories if they are interesting enough. Heck, if there is a story about local hockey that I come across and find interesting, I'll put something up.

I haven't promoted this site much yet so I don't anticipate that too many people are reading this but to those who are, bookmark it or subscribe to the feed and I'll deliver some opinions for you to fire back on. I'll also be cleaning up the site a bit but for now, I've just given it a standard Blogger template to work on.