+/- a Kub

by John Fontana on Jul 2, 2006 10:14 AM EDT in National Hockey League

I called it a night early last night after a whirlwind couple of days personally... So I totally missed news of the signing of Filip Kuba to a 3 year, nine million dollar contract...

he gem of Saturday's acquisitions was Kuba, 29, who signed a three-year, $9 million contract. Like Kubina, Kuba is a native of the Czech Republic who played for the bronze-medal winning Olympic team.

Kuba (6-foot-3, 205 pounds) has compiled 139 points (34 goals) in 375 NHL games. He scored six goals and had 19 assists in 65 games with Minnesota this season, leading it in average ice time (21:46).

"We think that bringing him into our system, he can post even bigger numbers," Feaster said. "For us, this is a complete, two-way defenseman, and at a price that when you look at what happened in the market today with defensemen, that's very affordable."

But beware, Lightning fans...

Feaster said the moves made by the Lightning during the past few days have nudged them "tight against" the $44 million salary cap, taking into account the six restricted free agents (Denis, Dmitry Afanasenkov, Evgeny Artyukhin, Ryan Craig, Ruslan Fedotenko, Cory Sarich) still to be signed.

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“nudged them tight against the $44 million salary cap”

What are the numbers?

by tiny on Jul 2, 2006 3:01 PM EDT reply actions

I’m not sure what the deal is — if they SIGN their own FA’s it gets tight indeed. Right now they have 16 players under contract and a cap hit of +35 million (with 3 undisclosed contract values).

by John F. on Jul 2, 2006 3:29 PM EDT reply actions

Ok, so within 24 hours I lost the guy on my office door (Modo) and my wallpaper (Kubi’s slapshot against the Devils). I’m hoping to see some wingers and more defencemen on that roster. Assuming we’ll be shifing some RW to LW?

by Marsha on Jul 3, 2006 8:26 AM EDT reply actions