Last summer while at a lake house with SkinnyFish, Fergus30 and my wife among others I sarcastically broke the news that Brian Burke had picked up Clarke MacArthur. "We signed another stiff" I boldly proclaimed and how wrong I was. MacArthur erupted to the tune of 21 goals and 41 assists as part of the Leafs most effective trio with Mikhail Grabovski and Nikolai Kulemin.
Mac and the USSR was a breath of fresh air for Leafs fans as they missed the playoffs for what seemed like the four hundredth straight time and Leafs fans had to be worried something stupid was going to happen as a deal wasn't signed. Lucky for us it's done.
Per Nick Kypreos MacArthur signed a two year deal worth about $6.5M ($3.25M per). This is a good signing: if MacArthur's performance wasn't a complete fluke then we have two cheap years before we need to sign him longer term and if it was a fluke we can bury him or move him at the deadline.
Nice job by Brian Burke and his staff avoiding the often messy arbitration hearings, good to see his Afghanistan trip hasn't gotten in the way of getting his work done.