Isles nice offseason continues with Calvin de Haan from seestyle's blog

Calvin de Haan has one full NHL season under his belt, but it was a good one.So, the New York Islanders made a wise move with their 23-year-old defenseman: They bought three years of restricted free agency for a little le s than $6 million and guaranteed that he'dcost le s than $2 million against the cap through 2016-17.The team announced the deal on Tuesday, along with bottom-sixforward Casey Cizikas' two-year, $2 million contract. Terms are from . Tyler Smith Jersey The Isles, ,have question marks on defense, and de Haan's lack of experience, theoretically, should be one of them, but he showed a lot as a rookie in 2013-14. In 51 games, he totaled 16 points and, more importantly, drove po se sion at 5-on-5 overall (52.2 percent Corsi For) and compared to his teammates (plus-5.2 Relative Corsi).He Roger Staubach T Shirts did all that while increasing his minutesto an average of 21:01, which he spent playingagainst good competition and on the penalty kill. New York seems to be on to something by pairing de Haan withTravis Hamonic who, it's worth noting, also signed a team- Dallas Cowboys Jersey friendly pre-free agency deal. If they're not a legitimate top pairing for a playoff team, they're a No. 2 with room to grow.And really, even if de Haan, the 12th overall pick in2009, doesn't improve, the deal will be fine. Defensemen who drive play in big, tough minutes generally aren't cheap and specifically, they don't cost le s than $2 million a year.It's a nice addition to what has already been a good offseason for Islanders general manager Garth Snow; he overpaid a bit for center Mikhail Grabovski and particularly winger Nikolai Kulemin, but they're good players all the same. Plus, the Islanders aren't lacking in cap space and have struggled to sign decent free agents for years.Snow also grabbed a late- Dallas Cowboys Rompers first round value pick in Joshua Ho-Sang and, most importantly, signed Jaroslav Halak. Swapping aslightly above-average goalie (.918 career save percentage) with the worst goaltending group in the league (.894 last season) is going to be huge.So, the end result is a decent goalie, at least three decentdefensemen (Hamonic, de Haan, Lubomir Visnovsky) and a forwardgroup led by John Tavares, Kyle Okposo, Frans Nielsen, Grabovski and Kulemin. Not bad maybe notgood enough Deion Sanders Jersey to make it back to the postseason after last season's trainwreck, but not bad at all.