Arbitration Avoided: Tatar Inks 4-Year Deal

Ken Holland blinked.

In the stare down between a general manager trying to keep his team salary cap compliant and the star player who scored 25 goals last season to lead the team. Ken Holland gave in to Tatar's demands, signing him to a 4-year, $21.2 million deal.

Reports suggested that going in to arbitration, Tomas Tatar's camp wanted a deal with an AAV (Average Annual Value) of $5.3 million. Red Wings management were reportedly at the $4.1 million mark.

There was another report that Tatar had passed on a 5-year, $5 million a year deal so Tatar getting his AAV bumped to the $5.3 million number he wanted is not that high of a jump.

However, it does put the Red Wings into a bind financially.

The Red Wings cap hit is now over $78 million in a season where the salary cap is only $75 million, and the team still has to sign restricted free agent Andreas Athanasiou. Johan Franzen's almost $4 million cap hit is allowed to be used as a buffer to go over the cap because he is on the Long Term Injured Reserve List (LTIR), but that only allows for a deal of $900,000 in the current budget.

Putting it simply, somebody is going to need to be moved, either by trade or by buyout.