The Ottawa Senators have signed Antoine Vermette to a two-year contract worth $5.525 millon. Vermette and the Senators were due to appear before an arbitrator today, but avoided the often ugly event by reaching an agreement at the eleventh hour.
Bryan Murray did well with this one. He signed Vermette without having to break the bank, and he did not lock into anything long-term. This was a fair deal becuase Vermette still has to prove he is worth big money before he can sign a big money contract (not that $2.7+ million is anything to sneeze at). If Vermette blossoms in the next two years, he will have helped the Senators be successful and be in a position to cash in big time as an unrestricted free agent. Of course, a strong season this year could see the Senators awarding him with a richer contract in the form of an extension.
There is also the possibility that Murray will trade Vermette, but I don't see that happening. All along I have felt that doing so for a puck moving defenceman would be a mistake because their secondary scoring, as weak as it is, would further suffer from his absence. Not to mention the fact that it would mean the departure of the number one face-off man on the team and one of its best penalty killers.
I had not heard anything to suggest that anything has changed since my last report on Andrej Meszaros, until I read Bryan Murray's quote that said there has been nothing new with him. I will check into this further as while Murray is one to keep things very quiet, he is not one to lie. One would think that if he was close like two of my sources suggested he was, he would have said as much. So I may have been wrong on that one, sorry. But we'll see what happens over the next couple of days.
