When I first saw the report on Fear The Fin about the Mitchell signing (3 years, $1.36M per year), my first thought was: too much.   This is a guy that sat out the regular season, played only 4 playoff games, and had no points.  I would think in that situation, the Sharks would have all the leverage in a contract negotiation.  We still don’t know if Mitchell will be back at the full-speed, balls-to-the-wall style of play he had before the injury.  In his only full season, he had 20 points.

That’s a lot of unknowns to lock up a guy for three years at over a million dollars.  What is it with the Sharks and million-dollar contracts?  If the Sharks don’t make any more moves, and say fill out the roster with Ortmeyer, Moore, Couture, and Joslin (not an unreasonable assessment, but not the one I would favor) the Sharks will have only 6 guys making under a million dollars.   To look at two sore spots, Anaheim and Detroit, they have 10 and 8 guys under a million bucks, respectively.  Chicago and Vancouver are pretty close to us – 6 and 4.  The top Eastern teams are mostly close except for Philly (10) –  Pittsburgh (7), Washington (7), and Boston (7).  I appears the Sharks are #2 in the NHL in million dollar contracts.

Now let’s look at the flip side of this signing.  Thanks to capgeek.com, it’s easy to look at at list of all the signings since June 30.  Now order them by cap hit- click on the Cap Hit column header twice to list in decending order.  Scroll down to Mitchell, he’s about a third of the way down the list.  Now try and get through the other two thirds and make a list of forwards you’d rather have than Mitchell.

I’ll wait.

Here’s mine:  Ian Laperriere… maybe.  Tomas Kopecky… maybe.   Todd Marchant… maybe.

That’s it.  Hmm, maybe this deal wasn’t so bad.