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2010 NHL free agency: Kings sign Willie Mitchell, 2 years $7 million

Willie Mitchell

Vancouver Canucks’ Willie Mitchell celebrates after scoring against the Dallas Stars during third period NHL action in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sunday Oct. 11, 2009. (AP Photo/THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)

AP

The Willie Mitchell saga is finally at an end and the winner of the pursuit is a team that finally isn’t playing the part of bridesmaid this summer.

The Los Angeles Kings signed the big defenseman today to a two-year $7 million deal, working out to be mathematically neat $3.5 million cap hit the next two seasons. According to Helene Elliott of the Los Angeles Times, the Kings were the only team to offer Mitchell a two-year contract. Considering the kind of money the Kings are ponying up for him, adding another year makes signing with the Kings an elementary decision.

We discussed a couple weeks ago what Mitchell could mean to the Kings and for them he provides a defensive shut-down player. With Matt Greene rehabbing from off-season surgery, adding Mitchell makes things a lot less shaky along the blue line. Mitchell will also help provide some leadership for budding stars Drew Doughty and Jack Johnson as well as for up and coming rookie Thomas Hickey. Mitchell along with Rob Scuderi give the Kings a defensive presence to help balance out the offensive skills of Doughty and Johnson as well as making up for the loss of plus/minus maven Sean O’Donnell.

Signing Mitchell also means that the summer hasn’t been a complete loss for the Kings. While they missed out getting Paul Martin and Dan Hamhuis, Mitchell, provided he stays healthy, is a great fall-back option to have. Sure losing out on Ilya Kovalchuk and landing Alexei Ponikarovsky doesn’t really make for a great trade-off, but with Mitchell they’ve made up for missing out on Martin and Hamhuis with a classic defensive defenseman.