After weeks of contract negotiations the Columbus Blue
Jackets finally have their starting goaltender signed to a long-term deal.
The club announced Wednesday that Pascal Leclaire had inked
a three-year, $11.4 million contract, paying him $3 million in 2008-09, $3.6
million in 2009-10 and $4.8 million in 2010-11. It’ll count however as $3.8
million per season against the Blue Jackets cap.
Leclaire has struggled with injuries in his short NHL career
but last season was his healthiest, in which he set career bests in games
played (54), wins (24) shutouts (9), goals-against average (2.25) and save
percentage (.919).
The latter three stats ranked him among the top goaltenders
in the NHL last season, and if he can stay healthy and carry over that strong
performance over the next three years not only will his new contract be worthwhile
but it’ll also be considered a bargain.
With the NHL trade deadline now past the next notable round of player movement won’t occur until June, 2008, and most of it will be free agents signing with new teams.
While the focus as always will be on unrestricted free agents, this summer the threat of offer sheets is now a very real one, thus hockey fans will be nervously watching the contract talks of their favorite restricted free agent players as July 1st approaches.
Many teams haven’t wasted time this season, locking up their best RFA players to lengthy, long-term contracts now rather than risk another club either setting the price or plucking them away.
As a result, the list of the top RFA players has shrunk considerably since the start of the season, but there still remains some quality talent who, if unsigned by July 1st, could be tempting targets for offer sheets. It’ll be interesting to see how many of the following are re-upped by the end of June:
Anaheim: Corey Perry.
Columbus: Pascal LeClaire.
Detroit: Valtteri Filppula
Edmonton: Tom Gilbert and Joni Pitkanen.
Florida: Jay Bouwmeester.
Minnesota: Pierre-Marc Bouchard.
Montreal: Andrei Kostitsyn.
Nashville: Martin Erat, Shea Weber and Ryan Suter.
I'm Lyle Richardson, also known as Spector, Foxsports.com 's "Prince of Pucks".,which is based on the fact I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada and I couldn't think of a better byline. I've been an NHL hockey commentator since 1998 on my website, Spector's Hockey, and I'm a contributing writer for Foxsports.com , The Hockey News and Eishockey News. I'm also a regular on The Faceoff Hockey Show and a frequent guest on "The Late Crew" on The Team 1200 Ottawa.
