[Son of Sam99]

Entry: June 30th, 2014

The entry draft was a big success. As is common we won’t know what players were steals or busts for a long time but by the end of the first round we had added Cal Clutterbuck who is a top nine forward at worst plus prospects William Nylander and Michael Dal Colle who appears to have been a steal at 15th overall.
Today marks the end of the resigning period so here’s an update:

RFAs:

Tendered Unrestricted Free Agents
Pos	Player	Qualifying Offer
D	Max Nicastro	$925,000
RW	Mitch Callihan	$610,000
C	Louis-Marc Aubry	$625,000

Each of the RFAs we tendered are guys we’re probably willing to match sheets on but I’m thinking it won’t come to that. Either they’ll step up their games this coming season and make themselves a part of our future or they’ll be supplanted by draft picks down the line.

UFAs

Released Free Agents
Pos	Player	2013-14 Salary/ notes
RW	Mikael Samuelsson	$925,000 / Added depth last season and really didn’t get to see the ice very much. Hopefully he’ll be able to land somewhere that he’ll get more playing time..
G	Jonas Gustavsson	$1,375,000 / A very serviceable backup but the Grand Rapids staff say Mrzaek is ready for backup duties in the majors so that's who we’re going with there, Gus will certainly land on his skates elsewhere
LW	Daniel Cleary	$550,000/ was a tough decision to let go but we want to free the space for some prospects to have a chance to make an impact..

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New Contracts

Resigned Free Agents
Pos	Player	Length / Salary/ Notes
C	Landon Ferraro	3 years / $760,000 / Least impressive of our center prospects but we’re not willing to pull the plug yet. Without progress in the next two years we may look to move him
C	Riley Sheahan	3 years / $1,490,000 / A very exciting prospect who is getting pait to make an impact in the bigs next seaso, should turn into top defensive forward
C	Cory Emmerton	3 years / $700,000 / At 25 years old it will take a big jump for Cory to be a full time NHL player, for the price though he adds depth in Grand Rapids and options when injuries strike
D	Kyle Quincy	4 years / $4,470,000 / This is almost Kronwall type money but the market is hot for blue liners and we wanted to keep him
D	Danny DeKeyser	3 years / $1,900,000 / This was a bit of a no brainer. Danny didn’t quite have the breakout we would have hoped for but he’s young and for three years under $2MM the hope (& assumption) is that in year three it’ll be a huge bargain
G	Brian Elliot	3 years / $1,215,000 / We went back and forth on this. Though Brian was a playoff hero playing out of his mind I wasn't sure three years would be wise but the price is ok even if he winds up behind Mrazek
LW	Tomas Tatar	4 years / $1,550,000 / We asked for an extra year from Tomas’ agent as he also only wanted three years originally. We ended up paying him a little more but it was worth it to me to have him locked down longer.

Free Agency:

The upcoming free agent class isn’t all too impressive but there are opportunities to better the team. We’ll still be looking to potentially add some bigger forwards but more than anything I’d like to target a top 4 defenseman. We’ll see what happens.