It's now official: Brendan Shanahan re-signed by Detroit

The Red Wings announced today that they have re-signed Brendan Shanahan. Although financial terms were not disclosed per club policy, the contract is for one year with another year as a player option and is believed to be worth $3.5 to $4 million. How much of that would be base salary and how much, if any, would come through incentive clauses is unknown. Either way, he will be making significantly less than the $6.5 he would have made had the Wings picked up the option remaining on his last contract. Since coming to the Wings from the Hartford Whalers in 1996 along with Brian Glynn as part of a deal involving Keith Primeau, Paul Coffey, and a first round pick in the 1997 draft (which turned out to be Nikos Tselios), Shanahan has helped the Wings to three Stanley Cups and has become one of the most popular athletes in the city. Many rightly believe he was the final piece in the puzzle which led to the 1997 championship, Detroit's first in 42 years, and, while his scoring has been on the decline in recent years, he is still a valuable part of the team's core group as a leader. I'm personally very glad to have Shanny back and I hope it won't be for just one more year. We fans can be pretty hard on him at times but we'd still defend him against other power forward in the league as the best. I don't expect him to score 40+ goals any more but I know he'll be a clutch player regardless. It was a classy move by the Wings to bring him back and an even more classy move for him to take the pay cut to come back. To give you an idea, after becoming an unrestricted free agent on July 1, Brendan Shanahan only spoke with one team. Detroit.