Hello Numminen! Sabres Re-Up with Teppo

It's been in the works for a while now, but yesterday the parties made it official by agreeing to a one-year $1.1 million contract to bring more-than-veteran defenseman Teppo Numminen back to the Blue and Gold for 2008-09. It seems the stumbling block was the outstanding grievance that Numminen filed with the NHLPA over his suspended salary from the time he began practicing with the team in November of last year:

As part of the deal, the Sabres reached an undisclosed monetary settlement with Numminen to resolve a grievance the player filed against the team in November. The grievance was over the Sabres suspending him without pay in September after doctors ruled he required surgery following a routine checkup at the Cleveland Clinic.

Numminen claimed the Sabres owed him a portion of his $2.6 million salary once he was allowed to practice with the team on a non-contact basis in November. The Sabres didn't activate Numminen until the final week of the season, and he played 16 minutes in Buffalo's regular-season finale against the Boston Bruins.

The grievance didn't deter Numminen from expressing hope that he would return to Buffalo for a fourth season, something he told management in April.

I'm glad that things have worked been worked out like adults in the end, as I suspected all along they would be. The 'cheap' and 'amateurish' Sabres could have taken the grievance all the way to arbitration in order to prove a point or further do Bettman's dirty work in undermining the relevance of the NHLPA, but instead they must have felt that Teppo's presence in the locker room was worth working out a deal now so that he could get properly prepared for training camp, which is just a few weeks away.

The Sabres now have 7 defensemen on the roster and only Andrej Sekera is capable of being sent down without clearing waivers. 8 if one includes Mike Weber. Sekera's the odds-on favorite to make the team out of camp, but with Teppo on board I expect a fierce battle for that spot. It's not in anybodies interest to keep both Weber and Sekera with Paetsch and Numminen on board. The kids need minutes on the ice to learn and they'll get a ton in Portland as the #1/#2 guy, as opposed to the #8 guy in Buffalo.

Ta,