When I saw the press release in my e-mail inbox yesterday morning, I'll admit I was worried. The Calgary Flames had re-signed Mark Giordano. This was going to be expensive. He's Calgary's best player by a fair margin right now. Best players typically do cost a lot of money.
I expected a deal to cost the Flames between $8 million and $9 million annually, enough to force some belt-tightening this coming summer.
So when I saw that the Flames had somehow gotten the deal done for $6.75 million per season, I was equal parts shocked, impressed and excited.