D’Agostini Signs Two-Year Contract

The first free agency news of the day concerning the St. Louis Blues involved a familiar name. Matt D’Agostini has signed a new two-year, $3.3 million deal to remain with the Blues, as reported by Chris Kerber. An interesting turn of events as the Blues had refused to give D’Agostini a qualifying offer, thus giving him the ability to test the open market on July 1st.

Back on June 21st, I dove into the topic of D’Agostini and a new contract and pondered what it would take to keep him around while not overpaying for his services. There I predicted that D’Agostini would receive something between Vladimir Sobotka’s contract (3 years, $3.9 million) and Patrik Berglund’s contract (2 years, $4.5 million).

Specifically, D’Agostini’s contract will pay $1.5 million in 2011-12 and $1.8 million in 2012-13.

After scoring 21 goals and 25 assists in 2010-11, it was clear D’Agostini was in store for a hefty raise from his $550,000 salary. The key however was to not just pay for what he did in 2010-11, but give him a contract based on a larger sample and a contract based on what role he will fill for the Blues moving forward.

Personally, I think this contract works well for both parties, just like the T.J. Oshie deal from yesterday. D’Agostini really did have an outstanding 2010-11 campaign but it is worth noting that his career is still very young, thus making it tough to tell what type of player he really is. In his first three seasons in the NHL, D’Agostini appeared in 101 games while scoring just 25 points – a stark contrast to what we saw last season.

Given the Blues uncertainty at ownership, the organization really isn’t in the position to give out any overly-inflated contracts – a trend we have seen throughout the NHL in the early stages of the FA period. Here, I think the Blues secured a quality forward for a fair price.