Monday, July 17, 2006

Colby Armstrong and Marc-Andre Fleury news

Though it's not really significant, Colby Armstrong and Marc-Andre Fleury have turned down their qualifying offers. The reason it's not really significant is that their rights are still owned by the Pens, and the players have elected not to file for arbitration.

My understanding of this is somewhat limited, but I think it's just a way for the players to indicate that they'd like to be paid more. The players, while restricted, are pretty much at the liberty of the teams that own their rights. They'll sign and be in camp, I'm sure.

Malone and Orpik both have elected arbitration and will have hearings later in the month.

Update - check out this article instead, which does a better job of explaining what it means when the players turn down the qualifying offer. This article is from the Trib, which I usually don't follow, but the Post-Gazette has been so completely lax in their coverage of many events, and even more sparse in terms of talking about potential free agents and whatnot... I may have to switch.

The most important thing I took from it is that Orpik is likely to sign, but that they're pretty far apart with Ryan Malone. Hopefully they can get things worked out with him.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i'd chalk it up to both wanting to sign long term contracts. arbitration awards one year deals, so they both opted out of that.

shero probably offered them both one year deals, something he's been pushing. they'll both sign before camp, neither can afford sit out the season.