Seidenberg Becomes a Rent-To-Own Player

The Boston Bruins announced a signing on Saturday morning, keeping Dennis Seidenberg away from unrestricted free agency on July 1st with a 4-year deal, worth $13 million.  The 28-year old German has been ever-improving in his time in the NHL and you can see by the way his deals have come about and the raises he has earned.  Seidenberg now has a cap hit of $3.25 million for the next four seasons, which is $1 million better than the cap hit he occupied with in the 2010 season and $2.05 million than the cap hit he had in 2009.

Playing between both the Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins in the 2010 season, Seidenberg was a deadline day deal player, thought to be more of a rental for the remainder of the season and the playoffs, but obviously, he did more than enough to impress the Bruins brass and earned himself a new deal for some stability in the next four years.  Seidenberg's final totals through the 2010 were 4 goals and 28 assists in 79 games, which were good enough to be the 44th ranked defenseman in scoring and is now getting paid reasonably to try and remain in that neighbourhood. 

With the signing of Seidenberg and also the signing of Shawn Thornton on June 3rd, the the Bruins cap figure now stands at $49.7 million for 14 players, which could be considered pretty high at this point of the Summer, but probably isn't too bad, considering Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Marc Savard, Zdeno Chara, Dennis Wideman and their goaltending is all signed on and ready to go for the 2011 season.  The Bruins can fill the remaining roster spots with affordable depth and youth players and still make for a very competitive team in the coming year.  The core is signed on in Boston, so the toughest task for them will be to build around it.