Caps Sign Poti and Kozlov

By now you should know about the four year $14 million deal the Caps gave Tom Poti today.

By and large I don't think this is a bad move for the Caps nor is this going to be their last. First question that has to be answered is which one of Steve Eminger, Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green, and Jeff Schultz is the odd man out? John Erskine-Bowles will handle the #7 defenseman spot and quite frankly, none of the kids would benefit from being the #7 guy anyway. The Caps have more moves to make because don't forget about Josef Boumedienne.

Poti will get to run the Power Play for us now and he can't do any worse than the blueliners did last season. He's exactly what you would expect George McPhee to get on a day like today. Nobody had us going after him and this isn't a big splashy signing. While I'm sure that some would have wished he got a better guy defensively than Poti, I think a Poti-Schultz combination wouldn't be too terribly bad.

One last thing to note, years ago there it was rumored (before Rumor Boy came around) that the Caps wanted to get Poti in a trade from Edmonton but were unwilling to meet the Oiler's asking price of Brian Sutherby. For now, the Caps have both players.

And while I was typing up this post, TSN reports a two year $5 million contract for Victor Kozlov to the Caps. Ok, he's a center who will run with A.O. on the top line. If we learned anything with the Peter Bondra days we learned that European wingers do better with European Centers. Secondly, he's not Alexi Yashin. That would have been a disaster waiting to happen. However, that's about it for the positives on this one.

At 32, and according to TSN not really good as a center, this isn't the guy who is going to be centering A.O. for the next five-ten years unless the Caps make him the second line center to play with Alexander Semin and throw Nicklas Backstrom into the fire on the top line right away. I personally felt that the first line center hole was something that the Caps should have tried to fill with a trade to relieve some of the logjam on defense. If nothing else, this is a stop-gap measure for the next two years.

But then again, there's a reason why I run a blog and am not the guy making the executive decisions.