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Things have pretty much gone as I expected for Carolina. Rutherford is nothing if not loyal. Carolina's three major signings are just re-signings of our own players (Jokinen, Cole, LaRose). Jokinen and LaRose I thought were good deals, but I still think Cole is a bit higher than I wanted (I was thinking low $2's as opposed to nearly $3 over two years). The only other re-signing I want to see is Ruutu, which should be a decent possibility since he's an RFA. He's also likely to get a major amount of whatever leftover spending money Rutherford has (the team's looking at a budget of about $50 mill tops) which means that Carolina once again isn't going to be making a splash in free agency. Again, not unexpected. However, the fans here are very devoted to the players on this team (see that bizarro #2 overall in ESPN's franchise poll), so while there is some muttering about not going after big fish, a lot of them seem pretty content with how things are.
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