Oilers Busy in the Last Week!

The Oilers have been busy lately with there signing of head coach MacTavish to a 4 year contract and then yesterday they went out and signed Ales Hemsky to a huge 6 year deal worth $24 million. He will get $3 million a year in the first two years of the contract and it will go up to roughly $5 million a season in the final year. Overall it's a pretty good deal, the Oilers are taking a small gamble on a player that has shown he could be a pretty big star in the NHL. The signing of the coach and the long term deal with Hemsky takes a bit of the bad taste of the Pronger situation out of your mouth and reminds you that not everyone hates Edmonton. The Oilers have all but admitted they seem to have an image problem with the players for what ever reason. MacTavish joked during his press conference, which was held at the Edmonton airport that "they hoped they might be able to catch a few of the players sneaking out of town". At least they can still laugh about it. The thing that impressed me the most with the Hemsky deal is the length of it and the fact he wanted at 6 year deal, which means he won't be an unrestricted free agent for 2 more years than if he had signed a short term deal.