Goodbye again Erik

And so the Erik Cole era ends in North Carolina.

Cole signed with the Montreal Canadiens today for a four year contract at $4.5 mil per year. Considering the length of the contract, it's probably unlikely that the best power forward evah! will be back with the Canes.

Now, this isn't the first time that Cole has left the Canes, but I doubt that Rutherford will trade for him again - the contract is a little unwieldy, and I'm not surprised that the Canes weren't willing to shell out that much.

I seem to be taking the loss of my favorite player a bit better than I did last time. Yeah, last time, when I was a crazy psychotic high schooler, I got all upset and did crazy stuff like change the background of the blog to black. Oh, you all can see I've changed the background again? Guess I turned into a crazy psychotic college student...

Anyways, I wish Erik the best in Montreal - he always played extremely well in their arena, so hopefully that trend will continue - as long as he's not playing the Canes, that is.

Beyond that, the Canes were relatively active today, signing four free agents. They resigned Jiri Tlusty to a one year, minimum amount contract. They signed center Tim Brent, previously of the Toronto Maple Leafs, to a two-year contract. They signed Brian Boucher, rescuing him from Philadelphia goalie hell, to a two year contract for just under a million per. And, finally, they signed Alexei Ponikarovsky to a one year contract for $1.5 mil.

I like Tlusty's contract, if he doesn't pan out, the Canes didn't lose much in the process - maybe he will finally come into his own. I don't know much about Tim Brent, but he sounds like he could be a good fourth-liner with penalty killing ability. Brian Boucher will hopefully be a consistent backup to take some of the obnoxious load that the Canes always put on Cam Ward. And Ponikarovsky seems like a good winger addition. I also can't wait to hear Chuck Kaiton to say that name.

In the article on the Canes site summarizing the day, it sounds like the Canes still want to add another winger to replace Cole's loss (and a big loss that is, considering how he played last season and his chemistry with Eric Staal), but that the Canes are probably going to wait for a trade to make that happen. That probably means that the rest of the immediate summer will be rather uneventful, unless said trade occurs.

All in all, not too bad of a signing day... except of course for the gaping hole left in my heart for Erik Cole. No, I'm not being overdramatic at all.