A meeting is on the horizon, but a contract is still a ways off, the GM tells KLAC (570-AM) on Wednesday.
“First off, Teemu’s an unrestricted free agent unlike a year ago, when we had to deal with the Scott Niedermayer situation; Scott was under contract.
“He (Selanne) doesn’t owe us a phone call or a decision or anything. We’re kind of at the mercy of when he decides, or if he decides, he wants to play and then, are we in a position to do something financially? Right now we’re over the cap and we’re trying to figure out a way around that. My information is that he’s on his way back, or just came back, and I’ll sit down with him at some point in the near future and see what he wants to do.
“Mats Sundin is a center, and that’s not a positional need for us right now. We need some other moves to take place to get under the cap and THEN we’ll sit down with Teemu. The Mats Sundin deal, what that’s doing is it’s holding up a bunch of other deals. There’s seven teams — seven – that are trying to sign Mats Sundin. That’s my information from (Sundin’s) agent.
“These are teams that have offered anywhere from 5 to 10 million per year on 1- or 2-year deals. If he decides he’s going to go to, you know, the New York Rangers, then six teams are sitting there with cap room and positional needs. Whether there’s a fit for one of our guys or not, I don’t know. i guess there will be some movement after that, but there’s a whole bunch of people waiting until this guy makes up his mind. It’s really put a logjam in a number of deals.
