Big paydays for RFAs

If you've been failing in your efforts to get in touch with Andrej Meszaros lately, don't worry. He's probably been busy doing a lot of browsing. Maybe a bigger flat screen. A new car to transport it. A new home in which to install it.

You know, the usual stuff.

Of course, he's probably just window-shopping at the moment because he doesn't have the cash in hand just yet. But it's coming. Oh, is it coming.

It wasn't that long ago that a restricted free agent like the 22-year-old Slovak would be lucky to double his entry level deal on his second contract. But after earning less than a million dollars in each of his first three years in Ottawa, Meszaros is likely to break the bank, nailing down a multi-year deal worth somewhere around $4 million a pop. Not bad for a guy who was minus-five in the playoffs and saw his ice time slashed as the series wore on.

That's essentially the deal reportedly inked this week by Dennis Wideman, another RFA blueliner who got four years and $15.75 million from the Boston Bruins.

Yeah, that's the same Dennis Wideman who was so highly thought of when the season opened that he was scratched on opening night.

Just a few months ago, that annual number would be a million or more above even the most generous valuations of his services. But the times, they are a changin'.

For one thing, the term "restricted" when preceding "free agent" is essentially obsolete. Kevin Lowe may be accurate in saying it was Columbus' deal with Rick Nash (five years, $27 million in August 2005) that let that particular horse out of the barn, but his sparring buddy Brian Burke is right in laying the blame for this at Lowe's feet. It was, after all, the attempts of the Oilers' GM to land Thomas Vanek (seven-year $50 million offer sheet) and then Dustin Penner (fiveyears, $21.25 million) that changed how teams had to respect their RFAs.

These players may not be able to choose what colors he'd like to wear, but the brakes have been taken off their earning potential. The same market forces that determine the value of an unrestricted free agent are now applied to RFAs as well.

So Wideman, who could have re-signed earlier in the year but wisely chose to see how the market would play out, is simply the latest signing to confirm a pattern of paying big bucks for players with more hopes and dreams than they have skins on the wall. The trend has been particularly conspicuous among blueliners.