Coyotes Sign Wolski

The Phoenix Coyotes re-signed trade deadline acquisition forward Wojtek Wolski to a new 2-year contract on Thursday afternoon, which is said to be worth $7.8 million over the duration of the deal, working out to be a cap hit of $3.8 million per season.  Wolski was acquired from the Avalanche around the trade deadline for Peter Mueller and was actually a very good player for the Coyotes after his arrival.

Wolski managed to play in 18 games for the Coyotes after the deal was made, where he posted 18 points (6 goals and 12 assists) in those games, making him a valuable player down the stretch.  In total, Wolski posted 65 points (23 goal and 42 assists) in 80 games between the two clubs in the regular season.

In the playoffs, Wolski had 4goals and an assist in the 7-game series versus the Red Wings, which suggested that he was doing his part to try and keep the Coyotes in the playoffs.  Unfortunately, the team fell short in that seventh game and were eliminated.  Still looked pretty good on them to be there though.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Wojtek Wolski	Keith Yandle	Ilya Bryzgalov
Shane Doan	Ed Jovanovski	Jason LaBarbera
Radim Vrbata	Adrian Aucoin
Scottie Upshall	Jim Vandermeer
Vern Fiddler	Kurt Sauer
Taylor Pyatt
Petr Prucha
Lauri Korpikoski
Mikkel Boedker

The Coyotes are doing a great job to piece together a team on a reasonable budget and Wolski's $3.8 million cap hit fits in nicely at the moment.  As of this signing, the team table above now has 16 players at an annual cap hit of $38.2 million, which is still over $5 million away from the salary cap floor, which the team will need to achieve with their next seven (or so) signings.  Of course, the Coyotes do have some talented youngsters waiting in the wings with some decent cap hits, so I don't think this will be a problem.

It's something else to think that Wolski was the highest scorer among all the forwards that are on the list for the Coyotes going into 2011, which does seem to mildly justify the medium-sized cap hit he received. The Coyotes have a good core of players from the back end outwards, so spending a little extra money, once their team budget is determined, could only help the team... unless they don't do their scouting and chemistry gets all bollocks'd up.  I kind of like this Wolski signing and he might just fly under the radar a little at your fantasy draft, so keep a close eye on him for a good bargain.