Blues Sign Halak and Janssen

The St. Louis Blues have signed newly-acquired goaltender Jaroslav Halak and re-signed tough guy Cam Janssen to deals on Tuesday, helping to round out their roster for the coming season. Halak was signed to a 4-year deal worth $15 million, which works out to be a $3.75 million cap hit per season, while Janssen avoided arbitration with a 1-year deal worth $600,000.

Halak is better known for his great run with the Montreal Canadiens through the 2010 playoffs, but got there with a pretty good year in the regular season, taking the number one job because of a 26-13-5 record, with 5 shutouts.  Those numbers gave him 62 points in the season for the pool, ranking him 68th overall and 18th among goalies.  In St. Louis, he'll be able to take the bulk of the work in the crease, which should give him some extra chances for wins, to which he should be able to capitalize some of the time.  32 wins (or more) seems fairly reasonable in St. Louis to me, I suppose the shutouts may not come as easy in St. Louis than they did in Montreal, but that's up to you to decide.

Janssen did file for arbitration on Monday, but that only seemed to be a formality, as he signed his new 1-year deal on Tuesday, which should get him to unrestricted free agency next Summer.  Janssen's claim to fantasy status is in penalty minutes, where he ranked 5th in the NHL with 190 PIM, so if there is any reason to pick him up, it's because of that.

As of Tuesday, we can now add Brad Winchester to the list of returning players to the Blues. He signed a 1-year deal on June 18th, but the salary figure had not dropped until today.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Andy McDonald	Roman Polak	Jaroslav Halak
T.J. Oshie	Barret Jackman	Ty Conklin
David Backes	Eric Brewer
Alex Steen	Alex Pietrangelo
Brad Boyes
Jay McClement
Patrik Berglund
B.J. Crombeen
Vladimir Sobotka
Brad Winchester
Matt D'Agostini
Cam Janssen

With three more deals on the books and an inquiry into their other contract situations, the St. Louis Blues now have 18 players on contract for the 2011 season, plus the final year of Jay McKee's buyout, which now has a annual cap hit of $39.6 million, only a few million now away from the salary cap floor.  The Blues still have restricted free agents like Erik Johnson and David Perron to sign, which should get the team to that benchmark, then add in a few depth defenders and the team should be set... in theory.