Gameday/Pekka Rinne Day: Preds@Coyotes/Pekka signs $49 million Extension

The Preds have been looking pretty decent lately with nice wins at home against Tampa Bay and Anaheim, and a tough yet encouraging loss 5-4 at Chicago on Monday.

We head to the desert tonight looking to avenge our home opener loss to the Coyotes. All that is well and good but today it's all about Pekka Rinne's whopping 7-year/$49 million dollar extension. Okay, one down, two to go right? Well maybe not.

The way I see it is this: I love the Pekka signing, 7/mil, whatever that's cool, although I think that pretty much dooms Weber's future with us because he's going to want to make a boatload of money. That is, unless Suter leaves and Weber is signed. Out of those two I have a very hard time thinking that Weber is more likely to stay that Suter. Suter, like Rinne, seems to really enjoy it in Nashville and seems like a guy who is perfectly content in a small-market. Weber likes it here I'm sure, but I could see him going somewhere else pretty easily. I think Suter "avoided" the question because that's the professional way to go about it. They have a game tonight.

So now if we have Pekka and Suter theoretically locked up for 7 and 6.5 (sure, why not?) million next season, add that to the rest of the "key players" making over a million with guaranteed contracts (based only on 2012/13 cap hit):

13.5 million plus:

Legwand - 4
Erat - 5.5
Fisher - 3 (UFA after next year)
Hornqvist - 3.25 (RFA after next year)
Klein - 1.35

Those players combined would make 30.6 million. Weber's fate is up in the air, and it doesn't include Kostitsyn who is a RFA this summer (making 2.5 million), Wilson who will be resigned for quite a bit more than his current 800k salary, and Tootoo who will be here forever. 

Defensively, Bouillon (probably gone), Blum, Hillen, and Laakso are free agents as well. So basically, everyone is except Klein.

Now my thought process is this: If we re-sign Suter and then trade Weber are we going to be able to get a good package in return that we would be able to keep under the cap, or are we going to let him walk and settle for the draft pick compensation? Obviously all of this is under the assumption that Weber isn't back with us.

I guess what I'm getting at is in my mind keeping all three ties our hands too much down the line and doesn't allow us to do much in the free agent market unless we let some of our young pieces for the future go, like a Hornqvist, Wilson, Kostitsyn, etc and I just don't think that's worth it. That's not even including the fact that I'm sure Fisher will want to be re-signed by both himself and the fans in 2013.

I'd love to re-sign Suter and look for an affordable-yet-useful package for Weber. I think it can be done with the right pieces. If anyone can make it happen I think our front office can.