Devils Busy on the First

Well, I think I will do some lumping in together here for the New Jersey Devils, as they have three signings I can confirm here right now and they are all on the back end. First of all, the Devils signed free agent defenseman Henrik Tallinder to a 4-year deal worth $13.5 million, a $3.375 million cap hit per year. Next, the Devils picked up one of the most sought after free agents in Anton Volchenkov, signing him to a monster 6-year deal worth $25.5 million, a $4.25 million cap hit per year. Finally, they signed on Johan Hedberg to be Martin Brodeur's back-up for the year, worth $1.5 million. That was a whole lot of dough shelled out.

That wasn't all to their day either, as they actually ended up buying out both Jay Pandolfo and Andrew Peters, saving themselves on some cap space for the 2011 season, but taking on a little bit for penalties. The overall penalty for the two buyouts is about $1 million for two years, so it isn't too bad.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Zach Parise	Andy Greene	Martin Brodeur
Tomas Zajac	Henrik Tallinder	Johan Hedberg
Jamie Langenbrunner	Bryce Salvador
Patrik Elias	Anton Volchenkov
Jason Arnott	Colin White
Brian Rolston	Anssi Salmela
Dainius Zubrus
David Clarkson
Rod Pelley
Vladimir Zharkov
Pierre Letourneau-Leblond

The Devils are already looking like a different team with a few new faces, but also some familiar faces, who are the identity of the franchise.  There's a lot to like there in New Jersey, just looking at how the squad is rounding out.

The 18-player squad that you see up top there is worth about $54.4 million against the salary cap, plus the $1 million in buyouts that we had seen as well today, leaves them with about $4 million left to spend, if need be on some depth players. I don't imagine that the Devils will be spending too much more on players after these deals are now done.