The Ottawa Senators have re-signed forward Antoine Vermette to a 2 year deal worth 5.525 Million. This deal avoids arbitration by literally minutes, one of the ugliest things for a team and a player to go through at any point of a relationship or career.
The link to the article is: http://www.ottawasun.com/Sports/Senators/2008/07/31/6317131.html
In my opinion, Ottawa got exactly what they needed for this deal. Vermette is a great young center with a multitude of different facets to his game. He will provide them with secondary scoring, as well as being a strong penalty killer and faceoff man. In return, I fully anticipate Ottawa to find room for him prior to his next contract on the second line (at least).
While I do feel like he got low-balled and expected that if he got signed by another team via trade, it would have been around 4 million, he showed a real interest in staying with Ottawa by taking that number, for probably two less years than he wanted.
I am looking forward to seeing how much he progresses this year.
