I may have jumped the gun a little bit with my doom-and-gloom post from last night. Thanks to some obsessive checking of TSN.ca, it turns out the the Senators have avoided abitration with Ray Emery at the 11th hour:

TSN has learned that the Ottawa Senators and goaltender Ray Emery have avoided salary arbitration by reaching a last minute, three-year contract agreement worth $9.5 million. It is a substantial raise from the $925,000 he earned last season.

Emery is coming off a career season as he replaced Martin Gerber as the number one man between the pipes for the Senators. He helped lead the team to their first Stanley Cup finals appearance in modern history. Emery was 33-16-6 in 58 regular season games with a goals-against-average of 2.47. During the playoffs he was 13-7 with a 2.25 goals-against average.

That works out to be around $3.166666666666 million per season, which is comparable to Cam Ward's contract. Emery was a hard guy to position on the market since technically a) you don't get to the cup final by being a schlump and b) even so, not many people would say he's a top 10 goalie yet.

I hoped the deal could get done and arbitration could have been avoided so as to not have any hurt feelings and cries of: "You said you were my best friend!". The Senators also have RFAs Chris Kelly and Christoph Schubert to worry about but I suspect the attention should shift to retaining Dany Heatley to a new contract as he is set to become UFA next season.

Which means the future cap situation for the Senators looks a little bleak and I know Uncle Eugene is a gajabillionaire but he's also a businessman and I'd rather not the Senators turn into a Frankenteam with all these expensive players like the Rangers [because frankly, who wants to be like the Rangers?]. But keeping the core group would mean a lot of the players taking discounts. And they would do that right? I mean people like playing in Ottawa, right? What's not to love? Right? ...Right?

Update...

The Canadian Press is now reporting it and it's been made official:

'It was a difficult negotiation,'' Emery's agent J.P. Barry told The Canadian Press. ''Bryan and I started pretty far apart but we worked hard to close the gap and were able to do so this morning after Bryan was able to speak with Mr. Melnyk.''

The 24-year-old Emery was a restricted free agent. He will earn $2.75 million next season, $3.25 million in 2008-09 and $3.5 million in 2009-10, for an average of $3.16 million a season, a big raise over the $925,000 he made last season.

He will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the contract.

Emery emerged as Ottawa's starting goalie last season and led the team to a Stanley Cup final appearance. He went 33-16-6 in the regular season with a 2.47 goals-against average and .918 save percentage. He was 13-7 with a 2.26 GAA and .907 save percentage. Emery has started all 30 of Ottawa's playoff games post-lockout.

The $3.16-million average for Emery eclipses the $2.66-million average salaries from Buffalo's Ryan Miller (signed last summer) and Carolina's Cam Ward and is less than the $4.25-million, one-year deal signed by New York Rangers starter Henrik Lundqvist.

Reports are that Emery turned down a contract that averaged $4 million per season so maybe the contentious issue was that of legnth and bonuses.

According to the math, it puts the Senators at just over $44 million. Kelly and Schubert shouldn't cost more than $2 million - $2.5 million which means the Senators could be looking at adding one or two more players. The Senators ought to look at adding another forward to the mix, assuming that re-signing Lawrence Nycholat was meant to replace Tom Preissing, the Senators should be set on the blue-line although understandably, another bigger, more physical d-man would also help. If the Senators can get another forward signed, Schubert could drop back to D.

Update - 2:19 pm



Progress! Christoph Schubert has just been re-signed to a 3-year deal. Financial terms were not disclosed but I'm sure they'll leak out sooner or later. Now all that's left is Chris Kelly.

Update - 4:45pm

Schubert's contract is for 3 years for $2.65 million which is about $833,333 average per year.

^{Cross-posted to HLOG. For a spreadsheet view of the Senators' salary situation, go to Bleu, Blanc et Rouge.}

Labels: arbitration, ottawa senators, ray emery