Thrashers Avoid Arbitration With Ladd

Of course, not long after Ben Eager gets his blog post, does Andrew Ladd follow suit in Atlanta, by avoiding arbitration and signing a 1-year deal with the Thrashers. Ladd, also acquired from Chicago in the fire sale, was supposed to have his arbitration hearing this morning, but the club and player got things done on a new deal that will pay him $2.35 million for the 2011 season.

Ladd was a pretty good pick-up by the Thrashers, since he was a good role player for the Blackhawks in their Cup year. In the regular season, Ladd finished with 38 points (17 goals and 21 assists) in 82 games, ranking him 205th overall and 147th among forwards, which is down from the 2009 season, but his role had changed a bit more and he was used primarily as a checking forward.

With the Thrashers, I would assume that he'll be trying to take on more of a scoring role, possibly as a second-line centre, behind Nikolai Antropov. I could definitely foresee some chemistry between Ladd and Evander Kane, which could be good for both sides, but I'll wait and see how that all pans out in training camp.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nikolai Antropov	Tobias Enstrom	Chris Mason
Rich Peverley	Ron Hainsey	Ondrej Pavelec
Andrew Ladd	Zach Bogosian
Dustin Byfuglien	Johnny Oduya
Evander Kane	Brent Sopel
Todd White	Boris Valabik
Jim Slater
Ben Eager
Chris Thorburn
Eric Boulton

The Thrashers have walked away from an arbitration ruling for Clarke MacArthur already this year, leaving him to be an unrestricted free agent, leaving Niclas Bergfors and Bryan Little as their only big restricted free agents left to sign. Currently, I have the Thrashers sitting with 18 players on their team table at an annual cap hit of $39.9 million, leaving five more spots open to fill $3.5 million to get to the cap floor, which could be filled by Bergfors and Little alone, in theory.

I'm not completely sold on the group of forwards that the Thrashers have to go to battle with this year, but I do like their back end, especially in the Southeast Division, which will be a wide open one to play in.  The six defensemen that the Thrashers have on the table had 25 goals between them in the 2010 season, which is a pretty solid number, nowhere near tops, but still pretty good.  Chris Mason and Ondrej Pavelec will have their work cut out for them in 2011, but I think they should be up to the task most nights.