Free Agency – Who’s Left?

With the two biggest Free Agent dominoes going down earlier this week, both to the Minnesota Wild, who is left for teams to pick through, and are there any diamonds in the rough still waiting.  NHL.com listed their top 30, with many of them being players that are short term older stop-gap solutions such as Brian Rolston, Pavel Kubina or Brent Johnson.

However there is some talent available that can contribute to any team.  Alexander Semin and Andrei Kostitsyn are the biggest names up front that are under 30 with offensive upside.  However both are enigmatic and not known for being able to contribute in the crunch.  Shane Down would be a good pickup but heist waiting to see what happens with the Phoenix organization next week before deciding his future.  Not exactly overwhelming choices.

But one of the most intriguing names to me is that of Peter Mueller.  Mueller had a solid 54 point season as a rookie in 2007-08 with the Coyotes and is a top flight offensive talent. Concussion problems derailed his career,  causing him to miss the entire 2010-11 season into last year.  He played 32 games over the second half of the season and scored16 points, not bad for a player that had missed most of the previous  16 months with no activity.

Senators GM Bryan Murray has indicated that he is finished shopping this summer.  But I would think that Mueller could provide the best value for the money, and would have been a much better gamble for my money than Guillaume Latendresse, with a much better shot at fitting in on the top two lines than Latendresse does, if that is indeed where they wish to play him.  We will find out.