Thursday, July 10, 2014

Ducks Add Heatley

He may have finished outside of the acceptable pool-worthy range of scoring in the 2014 season, but I think Dany Heatley's unrestricted free agent signing in Anaheim is post-worthy, as he will have the opportunity to resurrect his career with a more potent offense, where his talents won't be looked towards as being terribly crucial.

On Wednesday, Heatley signed a 1-year, $1 million deal to join Anaheim for the 2015 season and he may have the chance to either be the opposite winger to Ryan Getzlaf & Corey Perry or be the number one winger for Ryan Kesler on the second line.  Of course, Heatley had those kind of opportunities for top-six ice in Minnesota last season, but with only 12 goals and 28 points in 76 games in the regular season, there was no real surprise when he was a healthy scratch or him being demoted to the fourth line.

With only a $1 million cap hit, the pressure will be off, but if he does want to succeed in Anaheim, he will have to surpass some reasonable young talent, which the Ducks have been growing from within.  It will likely prove to be quite the challenge for him.  This may, in fact, make him into a pool-worthy player once again.

Salary CapThe Ducks are building quite the contender in Southern California and they are doing so with some good frugal sense. The addition of Heatley now gives their projected roster 20 players and they are still working with about $16.1 million in cap space for the last three spaces. This space will likely be saved for some bigger moves during the year, which likely means that they will be players for some bigger ticket potential UFA's at the trade deadline and they'll push for that Stanley Cup in 2015.

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