The Dallas Stars have come to an agreement with one of their restricted free agents, signing Brett Ritchie to a two-year, $3.5MM contract. Ritchie did not file for arbitration before yesterday’s deadline despite being eligible. The deal, which pays him an average salary of $1.725MM will be a raise of $850K from last season.
Ritchie was a second-round pick of the Stars in 2011 but hadn’t made an impact at the NHL level until this season. In 78 games, Ritchie finally found his scoring touch, registering 16 goals and 24 points. Those goals came in less than 13 minutes a night, making Ritchie a nice value for the salary and ice time Dallas invested in him. It’s not clear if that role will increase at all, after Dallas added two top-nine forwards in Alexander Radulov and Martin Hanzal, and more right-wing depth in Tyler Pitlick and Brian Flynn.
The most interesting part of Ritchie’s 16 goals is that they came on a very average shooting percentage. He shot 9.6% this season, lending credence to the idea that he could duplicate (or even surpass) that production with ease next season. Getting a potential 15-20 goal scorer for under $2MM is a relative bargain, and comes because of his lack of track record. Ritchie turned 24 on July 1st, meaning he still has some potential to grow into his role as a power forward and help the Stars get back to the postseason.
This offseason is turning out well for the Stars, who have added Marc Methot and Ben Bishop as well, while picking twice in the first round of the draft. With Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and John Klingberg still around, watch out for a potential rebound from the Stars into contention. They’ll have to figure out what to do with Jamie Oleksiak, Radek Faksa and Gemel Smith though, as the trio of RFAs need new contracts and the team has less than $3MM in cap space remaining.
All three were offered QO’s so shouldn’t their cap hold be factored in to the current cap situation? None of the three will have a cap hold of over 1.2 million and I can’t imagine any of them getting an offer with an AAV of over 1.5 million, so the cap situation shouldn’t be a factor with those 3 RFA’s If I’m correct about the RFA cap hold then the Stars should still be able to sign the trio of RFA’s and have about 2 mil in cap space.