Well, the General Manager of the Winnipeg Jets managed to avoid one of his five arbitration hearings and inked two RFA forwards in the process. Sadly, neither signing was Blake Wheeler, Bryan Little and Zach Bogosian who are still scheduled for their arbitration hearings within the next two weeks, but instead were the duo of Eric Tangradi and Patrice Cormier.
Yay, more "depth" in our bottom-six!
Tangradi was scheduled to have his arbitration in one week from today, but instead agreed to a two-year extension worth a total of $1.35 million. It's a one-way deal for both years, and the 24 year old is set to earn $650K in year one and $700K in year two. It's hard to argue with the amount of money being shelled out in the deal, as a guy with a $675K hit against the salary cap won't kill you, but he rejoins a bottom-six that is pretty well stocked. Where he fits into this tuft of players remains to be seen.
As Jets' fans, were still "buzzing" from Tangradi's signing, it was announced that Patrice Cormier had also agreed to terms as well. Cormier too was an RFA but did not have an arbitration hearing pending. He is another depth forward that is, at best, a fringe NHLer. Terms of the deal have yet to have to be disclosed, but we'll update this once we find out the numbers.
So what do these signings mean? Not sure. Tangradi will likely join a large group of players in the search of the bottom-six roles, but if he isn’t the LW on the third line then I’m not certain where he fits as I’m not sure he’s a fourth-liner. And Cormier? Pretty doubtful that we see much of him at the NHL level any time soon, but maybe he can still develop into a replacement for Jim Slater down the road.
At the very least, Chevy has cleared out some of his "To Do" list, but the bulk of his work is still in front of him. Hopefully these signings get the ball rolling on some of the bigger ones.
