how much it will cost to re-sign Niemi and/or Crawford. I know Crawford was making peanuts in Rockford, but Niemi was in the $1.2 Mil range last year (nhlnumbers.com is down for maintenance so I can’t remember exact numbers).

But from the standpoint of signing a guy to a 4 year deal and then shipping him off right away, it doesn’t look good. Same thing if we were to trade Campbell. In the event that we ever had cap space again, we probably wouldn’t garner a lot of interest from top free agents who might worry (rightfully so) they’d be shipped off after one subpar season

I am unconvinced that Huett is the man. Even if Khabi gets injured during the season (which he will), I think that Huett is marginally better than Niemi or Crawford*, and he’s tying up way too much cash. Getting Khabi for 2 to 3 years at 4 mil allows us to focus on Niemi and Crawford’s development a little bit longer so that we will have a goalie of the future that can win. If either one of them don’t pan out, we can look at free agency, when the time comes.

• OK…maybe that was a bit harsh, but I don’t think he can be our number 1, and he isn’t worth that kind of money.

makes quite a bit of sense. They’re also supposed to be in on the Swedish G prospect Jonas Gufstafsson…as are others like the Stars and Kings. The Avs are also currently renegotiating with Budaj and have already said that Raycroft wouldn’t be back. Even with the Avs cap room I wonder if the Hawks would be forced to take some unwanted contract back in return. Looking over the Av’s commitments not much in the way of bad contracts other than some overpaid D-men

Scott Hannan D 4,500,000
John-Michael Liles D 4,125,000

otherwise it’s Ryan Smith for two more years at $6.25 million.

but the good news would be that these two D-men also happen to be the only non-minor league D-men they have currently under contract so they might not be able to part with them out of necessity anyway. A straight salary dump would be awesome.

Not at that price, though.