All Leftover UFA Team

Just for fun, I'm picking a team of unrestricted free agents who didn't sign any deals in the first two days of free agency. Granted, in signing free agents, one doesn't always get the players one sets out for, so I picked an extra forward line, an extra defensive unit and a third goalie.

Teemu Selanne will end up with the ducks, but I couldn't justify this to myself as a potential eight place team without playing along with the polite fiction that he is testing the free agent waters. And hey, Kukla did the same thing in picking his team of UFAs before the signings started.

The line combinations aren't perfect--Mark Parrish would rather play the wing, but at this point in his career he'd be happy to play at all. If that bothers you, feel free to replace him at fifth line center with Mike Modano or Mike Grier. Arnott gets to play with veterans, like he prefers. Morrison gets to set up some skilled guys, while Prospal probably gets stuck fighting in front of the net to clear space for Kovalev and Zherdev. I think this team comes in under the salary cap and, for the first season at least, before everybody retires, has a chance to join the post-season.

Forwards:

Alex Kovalev Vaclav Prospal Nikolay Zherdev

Sean Bergenheim Brendan Morrison Teemu Selanne

Jason Williams Jason Arnott Chris Clark

Fredrik Modin Mike Comrie Jamie Langenbrunner

Zenon Konopka Mark Parrish John Madden

Defense:

Craig Rivet Tomas Kaberle

Anton Babchuk Scott Hannan

Brent Sopel Paul Mara

Steve Eminger Bryan McCabe

Ian White

Goalies:

Ray Emery

Pascal Leclaire

Hannu Toivonen

McPhee announced that the Capitals are done making offers to new free agents, but that they'll listen if people want to make offers to them. He showed he meant it when Tomas Vokoun called. It sure would be interesting if, say, Kovalev and Rivet expressed similarly strong desires to join this contender.

In fact, though, when I look down this lineup of the well-known veterans left on the open market, I am struck by how many once and future New York Rangers I see, and I have to almost give the Rags credit for not signing all of them yet this time around. I guess that phonecall to Brad Richards really took all of their time.