R&R: Here To Stay!

Marty St. Louis re-signed his contract with the Lightning today. For six years! Surely you know how important that is for a team coming off its first Stanley Cup championship.

Marty was the MVP and scoring champ last season and now he'll be a Bolt until at least 2011. The contract is worth $31.5 million, meaning that in all likelihood he'll be eating the last $5 million left in the team's salary budget for this season. That said, Tampa Bay is all but done with this year's contract signings.

It also puts a hurt on the possibility of retaining Brad Richards when he goes up for restricted free agency next summer. But that's still a year away and I'm going to pretend to be blind to it until then. Not only that, but none of this figures Dave Andreychuk into the mix at the moment. What matters now is our 2005-06 Lightning are pretty well locked down. A second consecutive Cup run is certainly not out of the question.

I knew Jay would get the job done.

With regard to the rest of the league, there isn't much to report today. The Mighty Ducks shipped Steve Rucchin to the Rangers for a six-pack of Labatt's or something and Mattias Ohlund inked a new contract in Vancouver.

Short show today. Let's all just revel in Marty's big commitment today.




All Smiles   It took a few extra weeks to nail it all down, but Vinny Lecavalier and Marty St. Louis are both here to stay. And it's a good thing, too. We Lightning fans want to see another playoff run.