The Senators have avoided a messy arbitration hearing today with Ray Emery by signing him to a 3-year deal, worth $9.5 million according to TSN. Emery, who helped the Senators to the Cup Finals this past Spring will be rewarded handsomely for his efforts and will officially be the number one guy for Ottawa.Emery finished the regular season with 33 wins in 58 games, including 5 shutouts, which put him in 46th place in the pool rankings, 12th amongst goaltenders. Depending on how the rest of the team fills out, a small increase in production should be acknowledged, as his confidence should be going through the roof. As the pool ranking may suggest, he should be more of a high second round pick, than a late first rounder... unless you have reason to believe otherwise.
| Daniel Alfredsson | Jason Spezza | Dany Heatley |
| Oleg Saprykin * | Mike Fisher | Antoine Vermette |
| Dean McAmmond | Chris Kelly * | Patrick Eaves |
| Shean Donovan | Brian McGratton | Chris Neil |
| Joe Corvo | Wade Redden |
| Andrej Meszaros | Chris Phillips |
| Christoph Schubert * | Anton Volchenkov |
| Ray Emery |
| Martin Gerber |
With this fat new contract on the books, the Senators face a bit of a salary challenge. Redden, Heatley, Spezza and Alfredsson aren't coming cheap this season... it's around $22.4 million for the four of them. Phillips will add another $3.5, Emery will be $2.75 this season, but the real big number on the books at this point in time is Martin Gerber's $3.7 million he'll be owed as the back-up. All told, this Sens line-up above is worth around $45.3 million and three of those players aren't even signed yet.
It really does seem now that the marketplace for goaltenders is becoming stocked with some high priced back-ups, who have potential to be a starter. Gerber in Ottawa and Raycroft in Toronto immediately come to mind. Teams like Ottawa will probably have to take very little in return if they want to move such high-priced talent, but the number of teams in need seems to be rather small.
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