San Jose brought two of their own back into the fold as Micheal Haley and Aaron Dell signed new deals with team teal.
Lost in the shuffle of the David Schlemko and Mikkel Boedker deals, the San Jose Sharks were also busy dealing with two of their own players.
Following the news of Boedker agreeing to a four-year, $16M contract with the Sharks, the team also announced that San Jose would be resigning forward Micheal Haley and goaltender Aaron Dell.
Haley inked a one-year deal to remain with the Sharks, while Dell signed a two-year deal. According to Cap Friendly, Haley’s deal will pay him $600,000 next year while Dell’s two-year contract is worth $1.25M.
With those two moves, San Jose finds themselves with $2.4M in cap space after spending more than $25M on the first day of free agency.
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Many may be surprised by Haley returning to the organization, but this is a typical Doug Wilson move as he always likes to have an element of toughness within his group.
Haley brings just that as he’s the ultimate glue guy for team teal as he’s someone who comes to the rink knowing the physical-style of game he has to play and he accepts that role. His teammates enjoy that aspect of Haley.
While he will never be an NHL regular, he’s the kind of guy that will feature at some point during the 2016-17 season for his toughness. In 16 games with the Sharks, Haley found the back of the net on one occasion to go along with 48 penalty minutes.
With the San Jose Barracuda, he notched 12 goals and 11 assists with a plus-six rating in 41 contests in the AHL.
Meanwhile, the resigning of Dell might have more significance for the makeup of the Sharks next season. San Jose is searching for a backup to Martin Jones after James Reimer signed a five-year deal in Florida.
This scenario was expected heading into the offseason, and after backups continued to fall off the market, it became evident that team teal would promote a backup from within the organization.
At this point, all signs point to Dell who outplayed Troy Grosenick with the Barracuda last season. He posted a 17-16-1 record in the AHL last season with a respectable 2.42 GAA and a .922 save percentage.
He was able to spend a vast majority of the Sharks playoff run in San Jose, serving as the third goaltender, but he will have to earn the job behind Jones as team teal will need someone to chip in around 20 games next season.
Next: Sharks Make Big Splash Signing Mikkel Boedker
With these two signings in the books, the Sharks are likely done dipping into the free-agent market unless they make some kind of trade. They still have restricted free-agents in Dylan DeMelo and Matt Nieto at the moment so it will be interesting to see what happens there.
I fully expect DeMelo to be back in teal next year, but after the signing of Boedker, the Sharks have quite the logjam on the wing meaning Nieto’s future is very much up in the air at the moment.