(UPDATE 10:07 AM)- And a little more Sens news just in case those RFA contracts weren’t enough to get you through the day. The Senators have now released their schedule for next season. All the details are here.
Talk about a busy morning for the Ottawa Senators.
Bryan Murray and Pierre Dorion rolled up their sleeves in Las Vegas and the result was a couple brand new contracts for two of the team’s most important players.
Mark Stone, the runner up for the Calder Trophy, signed a new three year extension that will see him earn an average of $3.5 million a season. He’ll get $2.25M in the first season, $3.75M next year and then $4.5M in the final year of the contract. It goes without saying but that’s a terrific cap hit for a player that was among the league’s leading scorers from January onward.
That wasn’t the only news of the day though as the Senators also put pen to paper on another solid contract with Mika Zibanejad. Zibanejad’s deal is two years in length with a cap hit of $2.6 million a season. He’ll get $2 million this season and $3.25 mil next year. At this point Zibanejad is locked in as the team’s second line centre so to get him signed for less than $3 mil a season is an absolute bargain.
Obviously, both these players were restricted free agents so they didn’t exactly have a ton of leverage. In the end, the Senators opted for shorter term deals to keep the cap hits low for the next couple seasons.
There’s obviously benefit to going longer term on young guys because you have the potential to save some money down the road. But when you consider some of the money that comes off the books in the next couple years, short-term does make sense.
Mike Hoffman and Alex Chiasson remain as the last two RFAs without contract. Short-term deals is a good bet for those two as well.
