Beautiful Decision Markov Locked Up 3 Years

There's not much more to say than my headline. Markov signed a three-year deal (allegedly at his previous salary).

This is great news for many reasons:

1) He's Markov: you know what we think of him
2) PK will have air to breathe, shoot like he did with less than a minute left in the season
3) $5.75 million from $64.5 million isn't that much to pay for a player of this calibre (the average player on a 23-man roster gets $2.8 million)
4) Emelin transition/staycation
5) There's no free agents to replace this guy, especially with Detroit also throwing money at the Rafalski hole

Pierre Boivin lays down the law

Good old Pierre Boivin. He gave the media (La Presse/RDS in particular) the what for today when he asked them to relent in their ridiculous endless fantasies and conspiracy theories around the Briere signing.



If you understand French, I recommend you watch the video on www.rds.ca


He also let slip that we were after Rafalski on July 1, which I think is really good news. Obviously we didn't get him, but at least the talent evaluators have their heads screwed on straight. That only leaves one mystery defenseman of the supposed three we were after at large (as Hamrlik was also one).

And, did anyone else notice we haven't had a single story in La Presse about why Ryan Smyth didn't make his way up the I87?

I heard he asked to play with Samsonov and Shayne Corson who he felt familiar with from the Cup run and his rookie season in Edmonton, but Gainey turned him down, then retroactively traded Sergei and let Ryan down slowly with the news of Corson's signing with Toronto and susequent retirement. So close.