Coyotes Finish Up Rieder

The Arizona Coyotes managed to lock up forward Tobias Rieder to a new 2-year deal, removing one of the top restricted free agents from the unsigned list.

Rieder came off a very good World Cup tournament, playing for the surprise of the tourney, Team Europe, and he did earn himself a deal worth $4.45 million in total, which worked out to be a $2.25 cap hit for each season, a good bridge deal in general.

The 23-year old German has established himself as a good third line winger with significant speed and plays a strong game on the penalty kill, which allows for shorthanded chances.

Last season with the Coyotes, he picked up 37 points in all 82 games and this season, he has been projected to hit the 40-point range and this signing will certainly allow for him to do that.  He will certainly be one of the bigger pieces to their puzzle this season, if they are going to have any sort of success.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Shane Doan	5.000	Oliver Ekman-Larsson	5.500	Mike Smith	5.667
Jamie McGinn	3.333	Alex Goligoski	5.475	Louis Domingue	1.050
Martin Hanzal	3.100	Michael Stone	4.000
Tobias Rieder	2.225	Connor Murphy	3.850
Brad Richardson	2.080	Luke Schenn	1.250
Radim Vrbata	1.000
Max Domi	0.894
Anthony Duclair	0.773
Ryan White	1.000	Zbynek Michalek	3.200
Dylan Strome	0.894	Jakob Chychrun	0.925	Justin Peters	0.600
Lawson Crouse	0.894	Anthony DeAngelo	0.863
Christian Fischer	0.853	Klas Dahlbeck	0.750
Christian Dvorak	0.839	Jarred Tinordi	0.700
Jordan Martinook	0.613	Dakota Mermis	0.627
Pavel Datsyuk	7.500	Chris Pronger	4.921
Dave Bolland	5.500	Kevin Connauton	1.000
Nick Merkley	0.894	Kyle Wood	0.718	Adin Hill	0.726
Henrik Samuelsson	0.894	Dysin Mayo	0.653	Marek Langhamer	0.648
Tyler Gaudet	0.874	Jamie McBain	0.650
Brendan Perlini	0.863	Justin Hache	0.640
Ryan MacInnis	0.798
Laurent Dauphin	0.776
Michael Bunting	0.668
Conor Garland	0.663
Stefan Fournier	0.633
Matia Marcantuoni	0.608
Garret Ross	0.600
Craig Cunningham	0.600
Chris Mueller	0.600

The players in blue above are all fighting for jobs on this season's roster and that's where the general interest is here.  The desert dogs are hosting quite the battle for jobs, where the guys in green are pool worthy players, where Rieder lands, and the ones in yellow are roster players that likely won't have any significance in the hockey pool for the coming year.  The players in red are non-playing players, likely to injury or retirement.  My current count shows 32 players in colour, $6.6 million above the cap ceiling, so they will have to come down by that much, when they cut down their roster.

Datsyuk's $7.5 million will have to stay on the hit, while Pronger and Bolland will have their cap hits go to LTIR, if needed, while Connauton will probably start the season on the regular IR and won't nearly have the effect as the other three.