Red Wings sign Ruslan Salei

I completely overlooked him in the veteran defenseman category. With all the Willie Mitchell talk, seems kind of redolent of the Fabian Brunsstrom/Ville Leino situation where it looked like we were going hard for the one guy and ended up landing the other.

I have a feeling this will turn out better than that one did though.

Helene St. James has it at $750K with bonuses totalling $350K.

Not sure what he’ll have to do to get those bonus dollars, but max cap hit of $1.1M

I think they’ll go through to camp over the cap (because you can, without penalty) and then decide from there. I think Kindl and Draper are absolutely out of the question though in terms of getting dropped.

Right now, it means that Meech will have quite an uphill battle if he wants to stay a Red Wing. Remember that he said he wanted a trade if he wasn’t going to crack the lineup, so we can assume he’s as good as gone. I don’t think this has any real effect on the forwards though because Abdelkader will be the one who makes Kenny make that decision.

Personally, I think Abdelkader’s eventual re-signing will mean that we have to chance sending Ritola down through waivers (although Ansar Kahn makes a good point about Ritola being more valuable than Drew Miller, I haven’t made up my mind either way in regards to what Kahn thinks).

Fortunately, as Casey points out, we can be 10% over the cap through training camp with no penalty, so these decisions don’t have to be made right away.

You can take Kindl off that list. Probably Draper too. Kindl has been heralded as our next franchise d-man since he was drafted and Draper has the legacy/loyalty factor.

Miller has little chance of clearing waivers at this point. Ritola has that chance and we could bury him in Grand Rapids for one final season. Next year we have quite a few openings due to likely retirements (Maltby, Draper, Ozzy, Lidstrom – it hurt me deep down to write that list, Modano), so Ritola could easily make the team next year. Meech is gone, if anyone dares grab him from waivers. So Meech is one spot and Ritola or Miller is the other. While I like Miller, I don’t think we can really take a chance on Ritola who could be a top 2 line guy soon for someone who’d be lucky to make our third line at any point in his career (Miller).

I don’t think Holland would have overloaded his roster this much if he didn’t have something planned, though. The man is, arguably, the best GM in pro sports. Maybe he is pulling off my Stuart and Rafalski for Weber dream trade? :D

said kindle…. but after this curveball I have no idea.

I’d like to see him hit the press box frequently during the regular season. He’s got a wonky back and I want him fresh for the playoffs when he will (hopefully) be allowed to do more clutching and grabbing. He’s a playoff body, not a regular season workhorse.

Why can’t he be our 7th defenseman? He’s only making $750K and has a history of injuries.

Janik is probably out of the equation unless there are injuries; he’s a career AHLer. I think Salei plays more minutes than Kindl, but Jakub gets a decent amount of minutes at the NHL level.

I think this year will probably be bouncing back between Ericsson and Kindl. I don’t think either are really ready for full time duty and I flat out forgot that we had Janik because he doesn’t even enter my mind as a potential 6th man over either youngin’

I really hope you’re being sarcastic