Sakic Signs With Avalanche

Joe Sakic signs with the Colorado Avalanche

Shane Giroux of the Colorado Avalanche Blog submits:

Holy out-of-the-blue, Batman! Joe Sakic has signed on with the Avalanche for one more year. Thanks to Sully for the tip in the comments of my previous Sakic post.

Honestly, I thought the press conference Sakic had scheduled for tomorrow would be uneventful. Maybe I was getting apathetic about the whole “Will he or won’t he?” angle. Or maybe I’m in that weird limbo phase of being disappointed about summer coming to a close but excited about hockey coming back causing my emotions to neutralize.

But it turns out I was dead wrong and couldn’t be happier. And with a price tag of $6M, I bet Francois Giguere is whistling zippety-do-da all day long today. I’ll take Sakic for $6M over Sundin for $10M any day of the week, twice on Friday and three times on Canada day.

At a cap hit hovering in the $50M area ($4,6M according to nhlnumbers.com, $50M according to nhlscap.com and $52M according to DD), the Avalanche have left themselves with plenty of wiggle room. Sources tell me Gomez is on the block but I hear he’s going to Phoenix straight up for Kurt Sauer.

And can you believe he signed with the Avalanche? Man, I know Vancouver was in the running until the very end and so were the Rangers but he pulled a 360 and went back to the Avs. Shocking.

I wonder where all the prognosticators will put the Avalanche in their pre-preseason rankings now.

…Actually, I don’t care.