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Calgary Flames avoid arbitration, sign David Rittich to two-year deal |
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Follow me on Twitter @ToddCordell
The Calgary Flames have locked up another one of their restricted free agents in advance of arbitration.
This time it's goaltender David Rittich who has put pen to paper on a two-year contract extension. It will carry an annual cap hit of $2.75 million.
Rittich went 27-9-5 and posted a .911 save percentage in a year numbers were down fairly significantly across the board. More impressively, he was one of the league's better netminders at 5v5. That's the game state most indicative of a goaltender's quality.
There, Rittich matched the likes of John Gibson, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Frederik Andersen with a strong .929 save percentage; good for 10th (tied) among 43 goaltenders to log 1,500+ minutes.
Some might argue Rittich's life was made easier playing behind a strong Calgary defense. That might be true but Mike Smith posted a woeful .906 SV% at 5v5 playing behind the same cast of characters on a nightly basis.
I think $2.75 million is a very good number for the Flames. Not only are they getting Rittich at a discount (relative to what lesser goaltenders like Mikko Koskinen fetched, anyway) but they're getting it at a time they're pressed up against the cap.
Now, they have a competent tandem of Rittich and Cam Talbot locked up for an affordable $5.5 million.
After extending Rittich, GM Brad Treliving has just $4.67 million to re-sign Matthew Tkachuk and Andrew Mangiapane, according to CapFriendly. That's obviously not enough to get the job done. Something is going to have to give in the coming weeks.
numbers via naturalstattrick.com and capfriendly.com
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