Islanders Land Eaton

The New York Islanders finally got to the task of trying to help out their salary cap number from the basement of the NHL and up towards the salary cap floor, which they started July quite some distance away from.  On Friday, the Islanders took to signing defenseman Mark Eaton to a new 2-year deal, worth $5 million, which is a $2.5 million cap hit per season.

In 2010, Eaton was employed by the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he played in 79 games, scoring 3 goals and added 13 assists.  Eaton was fairly deep in the Penguins depth chart, which meant quite a few less minutes, but going to a team like the Islanders should change that around or at least give him the opportunity to change it around. 

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
John Tavares	Mark Streit	Dwayne Roloson
Frans Nielsen	Jack Hillen	Rick DiPietro
Blake Comeau	Bruno Gervais
Josh Bailey	Mark Eaton
Trent Hunter	Andrew MacDonald
	Brendan Witt
	Radek Martinek

The Islanders have not done too much since their Pool Outlook other than make some selections at the Entry Draft and there is no way that any of those players are going to be on here right away. The prospects will have to wow some people at camp before they can make the team table.

Saying that, the Islanders table looks to be very barren at the moment and their cap hit remains the lowest in the league with this group of 14 players, sitting at $28.5 million. The Islanders are having trouble drawing crowds on Long Island, so there isn't a great deal of desire to spend too much money on big name free agents.  I will be curious to see who they fill their forward ranks with, seeing if they use some of their young talent that is waiting in the wings, but they will have to sign someone to some big money before too long, just so they can hit the cap floor.