Thrashers Sign Burmistrov

The Atlanta Thrashers announced on Tuesday that they have signed their 1st round pick from this past Summer, forward Alex Burmistrov, to a 3-year, entry-level deal.  Burmistrov has stuck around in Thrashers camp leading up to this point and has seemingly won a job with the big club, so all that was left to do was to sign him to his entry-level deal and now he's ready to rock on opening night.

Burmistrov's deal is said to be worth $900,000 against the cap per season, which includes his signing bonus.  Other entry-level bonuses have not been counted, but I would imagine that they will bring his cap hit to around the $2 million mark when it is all said and done.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nikolai Antropov	Tobias Enstrom	Chris Mason
Rich Peverley	Dustin Byfuglien	Ondrej Pavelec
Niclas Bergfors	Ron Hainsey
Andrew Ladd	Zach Bogosian
Bryan Little	Freddie Meyer
Nigel Dawes	Johnny Oduya
Evander Kane	Brent Sopel
Jim Slater	Boris Valabik
Ben Eager
Chris Thorburn
Fredrik Modin
Eric Boulton
Alex Burmistrov
Patrice Cormier
Andrew Kozek
Anthony Stewart

The Thrashers are now counting on the team above to be their opening night line-up, not including Cormier or Kozek, who are currently injured and will remain with the club until their injuries are healed, likely heading down to the AHL when they are ready to get going again.

Currently, I have 24 active players on the Thrashers roster, plus one buyout on their books for an annual cap hit projection of $45.7 million, just assuming that Burmistrov's annual cap hit remains at $900,000, which I don't figure it will.  Nevertheless, $45.7 million is a pretty safe number, which Burmistrov's new cap hit couldn't rock too severely, so the Thrashers should be safe, even with one more cut to make.  It may even be possible that Burmistrov only plays in the 9-game limit, so his contract can extend and start next season, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

In the grand scheme of things, I like the direction that the Thrashers have moved in, now that I've had some time to look over some of their results and see how well things have come together so far.  I'm fairly sure some of my skepticism has dissipated from the Summer, despite not winning of much anything in the preseason.  I, like many people, will be curious to see how they finish up the year.