Thrashers Re-Sign Little

The week starts off alright with a new signing to announce, as the Atlanta Thrashers have taken care of one of their outstanding restricted free agents, although not a top three forward, he's a top six forward in Bryan Little. Little signed a 3-year deal on Monday morning, said to be worth $7.15 million, which works out to be a $2.383 million cap hit per season.

Little is coming out of his third season in the NHL and as an Atlanta Thrashers forward, where he picked up 13 goals and 21 assists in 79 games with the club.  Little finished in 247th in pool scoring among all players and 177th among forwards, which would suggest he would be further down the list.  Little has topped out at 51 points in 79 games in 2009, so he is definitely capable of eclipsing the half-century mark, almost making him a sleeper for the draft this year.

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

The Thrashers are starting to put together a competitive team there in the Southeast Division and they had even impressed me in their second six I had written about over the weekend, especially with Zach Bogosian ranking where he is at the moment.  I don't have high expectations in the fast-paced Southeast Division as a whole, but I don't think I would be surprised if they came flying out of the gate.

In terms of the salary cap, the Thrashers are going to be a cap floor kind of team, which doesn't help their overall expectations too much, but they have made great strides in building with a budget. The 19 players they have listed above, plus one buyout, now come in at $41.9 million against the cap annually and they still have three forwards they could add to the mix to get everything in good shape.  Among those they have to sign still in Niclas Bergfors, who is a restricted free agent and he could see a nice budgeted deal, which will help get the club to the $43.4 million floor.