Early Departures

The Colorado Avalanche were busy today. They resigned former Gopher Jordan Leopold, former St. Cloud State Husky Jeff Finger, St. Cloud native Kurt Sauer, and Dartmouth underclassmen David Jones.

Minnesota fans are anxiously waiting, as we're now 10 days away from Don Lucia's "June 1st deadline" for players going pro. The two big names to keep an eye on are Kyle Okposo, and Alex Goligoski. Some of the big name Twin Cities sports journalists have said both are going to sign, but as we learned with Phil Kessel, the odds of them being right is no more than 50%, so you may as well go down to the park and start asking squirrels.

My gut feeling is that Okposo will sign fairly soon. I'm not as sure about Goligoski. I think it could end up being a situation like with Scott Parse where they just can't come to any agreement and Goligoski ends up coming back for his senior year.

Northern Michigan might not know about star forward Mike Santorelli's future until late in the summer.