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Chicago, IL - The Chicago Blackhawks signed forward Patrick Kane to a three-year contract Wednesday.

The 18-year old Kane was the number one overall pick in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft last month.

“Patrick is a dynamic and exciting young player. We’re pleased that he will begin a long and productive career with the Blackhawks when we open camp on September 13,” general manager Dale Tallon said.

Kane led the Ontario Hockey League in scoring last season with 62 goals and 83 assists in 58 games with the London Knights.

“The Blackhawks organization has treated my family and me in a first class manner and I’m looking forward to a long and exciting career with the team,” Kane said.

Tampa, FL - The Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday re-signed defenseman Doug Janik to a one-year, two-way contract.

Janik played his first full season in the NHL last year after earning a roster spot in training camp. He finished with two goals and 11 points in 75 games, averaged 14:28 of ice time per game, and ranked fourth among Lightning defensemen in blocked shots with 98.

“We have been trying to sign Doug Janik since our season ended prematurely in late April; however, the issue was and has always been that we were not prepared to offer him a one-way contract,” Tampa Bay executive vice president & general manager Jay Feaster said. “While we obviously lost a pair of defensemen this summer, the fact remained that when we acquired Shane O’Brien at the trade deadline last year Doug became the odd-man out of the lineup. We have every confidence that Doug can and will compete hard in camp to win a job on our blue line, but we felt the need to protect our downside in the event one of our other players jumped over him and grabbed the final spot.”

Janik scored his first NHL goal on January 2 at Montreal and posted his first point on November 22 at Florida. He has appeared in one Stanley Cup Playoff game, and is a veteran of 85 regular season games and six playoff games with Tampa and Buffalo.

“Doug tested the free agency market and received quite a few two-way offers,” Feaster said. “Inasmuch as he knows our system, he has a head coach who knows him and likes him and is comfortable with him, and because he believes in our organization and the way we do business through the merit system, he elected to come back to Tampa rather than sign elsewhere. We are thrilled that he is back in the fold and we look forward to having him in training camp competing for a spot.”

Janik, 27, was originally selected by Buffalo in the second round (55th overall) at the 1999 NHL Entry Draft and got originally signed by the Lightning on July 6, 2006.

Atlanta, GA - The Atlanta Thrashers announced Wednesday that they have agreed to a multi-year contract with forward Jim Slater.

Slater, who scored five goals and tallied 14 assists in 74 regular season games for Atlanta in 2006-2007, was a restricted free agent. The terms of his new deal were not yet disclosed.

In 145 career games with Atlanta, Slater has totaled 39 points (15 goals, 24 assists) and 108 penalty minutes. In ‘06-’07, Slater was fifth on the team with a plus-eight rating, and also appeared in four Stanley Cup Playoff games.

The Petoskey, Michigan product played four seasons at Michigan State, tallying 172 points in 157 career games. In his junior and senior seasons, Slater was the Spartans’ team captain and was named team MVP.

Newark, NJ - The New Jersey Devils inked forwards Cam Janssen and Grant Marshall to new contracts on Tuesday. Per team policy, terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Janssen, the club’s enforcer and 117th selection in the 2002 draft, scored one goal and accumulated 114 penalty minutes in 48 games for the Devils last season. He has 205 penalty minutes in 95 career games over two seasons in New Jersey.

Marshall posted 24 points in 59 games with Lowell of the American Hockey League in 2006-2007. The 34-year-old checking forward last played in the NHL in 2005-2006 with the Devils, scoring eight times with 25 points in 76 contests.

In an 11-year NHL career, Marshall has 92 goals, 239 points and 793 penalty minutes in 700 games with Dallas, Columbus and New Jersey. He was part of two Stanley Cup winners with the Stars (1999) and Devils (2003).

The club also inked journeyman defenseman Ian Moran and fellow backliners Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre and Olivier Magnan, and also signed forward Noah Clarke.

By Dan Di Sciullo

A quick review of sports news these days is likely to include a story of an embattled commissioner fending off interrogations about how to handle his sport’s latest controversy.

Roger Goodell of the NFL has had to deal with disciplinary issues since taking over for Paul Tagliabue last season, and currently has the alleged Michael Vick dog-fighting ring to deal with.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig has been doing his best Hamlet impersonation as he waffles over whether or not he should embrace Barry Bonds chase of Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record.

Finally, David Stern of the NBA has been dealing with the news that one of his referees has been gambling on league games.

That leaves us with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who has been lucky enough to avoid a major scandal this summer. That fact would make Bettman happy, if he wasn’t coming off one of the most criticized NHL seasons in recent memory.

Now, Bettman did have quite the controversy on his hands last year, when former NHL player Rick Tocchet was charged with promoting a nationwide gambling ring. Janet Jones, the wife of hockey great Wayne Gretzky, was also accused of placing bets within the ring, but was not charged in the case. Luckily for Bettman and the NHL, that story slowly went away as Tocchet ultimately pled guilty to conspiracy and promoting gambling.

Since the end of the Stanley Cup finals, Bettman and his league’s current problems are not garnering headlines, but the NHL’s overall situation still leaves hockey fans with cause for great concern.

First on the docket should be the disastrous television ratings the hockey playoffs pulled in the United States.

Every league outside of the NFL is struggling with its TV numbers in the U.S., but the NHL’s ratings were so low it started to raise the question, “How long can professional hockey operate as a major sport in America?”. After all, the NHL gets pounded regularly in the ratings by NASCAR, and is now even getting surpassed by Arena Football and poker.

The fact that the NHL is getting horrible numbers on Versus, the league’s cable carrier in the U.S., is not surprising, because that channel’s profile is practically nonexistent compared to that of ESPN. Few people actually watch the NHL on Versus, and only slightly more seem to join the action when hockey is broadcast nationally on NBC.

A larger presence on American television is a must to ensure the future success of the NHL. All the Sidney Crosbys and Alexander Ovechkins in the world aren’t going to do the league any good unless they are marketed properly.

The bottom line is that Bettman needs to get his league a new television deal in the U.S. soon, or the NHL could be relegated to the back page of the sports section with professional lacrosse and indoor soccer.

The league has looked sluggish for quite some time thanks to Bettman’s love of non-traditional hockey towns like Anaheim, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, etc. Some of those clubs have actually flourished on the ice, with the Ducks, Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning winning the last three Stanley Cup titles, but championships won’t turn locals into hockey fans overnight.

Then there is the case of the Nashville Predators, a team that has improved its play and popularity since coming into the league in 1998-99, but is still in danger of getting moved to greener pastures. The proposed move to southern Ontario appears to have fallen by the wayside, but the Preds could still get relocated to Kansas City or Winnipeg.

Moving the Predators to either of those places might help that franchise, but Bettman and the NHL now need to consider bringing up that hated c-word: contraction.

If the NHL went the contraction route and eliminated six teams, that could possibly give the league the boost it has been looking for. The remaining teams would see their talent level increase and that couldn’t help but improve the quality of play on the ice.

Getting rid of a few teams in the southern part of the U.S. would be the best way to employ this strategy, and that would help the NHL get back in touch with its true fan base.

But Bettman has always seemed to care more about the business end of things than the quality of play in the league and that’s why contraction is a long shot.

Ultimately, what the NHL needs to do is finally decide that Bettman’s tenure as commissioner is nearing its end. Since taking the position in February of 1993, Bettman has watched as the league’s popularity has plummeted, and it is clear that new leadership is needed.

Just because Bettman has eluded a major scandal so far this summer doesn’t mean that everything is right in the NHL. One of these days, Bettman’s incompetence will catch up to him, and only then can the NHL regain its standing as a major sport in the U.S.

Ottawa, ON - The Ottawa Senators avoided salary arbitration by re-signing defenseman Christoph Schubert to a three-year contract on Tuesday.

Per club policy, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Schubert recorded career highs of eight goals, 17 assists and 25 points last season with the Senators. He missed just two of 82 regular season games, playing at left wing in 51 of those contests. He also skated at left wing in all 20 playoff games, finishing third in the league with 57 hits.

Drafted 127th overall by Ottawa in 2001, Schubert has 12 goals, 23 assists and 104 penalty minutes in 136 career NHL games. He also has two assists in 27 postseason appearances.

The 25-year-old Munich native has represented Germany in two consecutive Winter Olympic Games.

Ottawa, ON - The Ottawa Senators have avoided salary arbitration with goaltender Ray Emery on Tuesday as the two sides agreed to a three-year contract.

Emery, who was a restricted free agent, led Ottawa to its first ever Stanley Cup appearance last season. The run fell just short of the ultimate prize, however, as Ottawa lost the Cup finals to Anaheim in five games.

After taking over for Dominik Hasek during the 2005-06 season after Hasek was lost to a groin injury, Emery has been Ottawa’s full-time netminder. Last season he appeared in 58 games and posted a 33-16-6 record with a 2.47 goals- against average with five shutouts.

He appeared in all 20 of Ottawa’s playoff games last season and was 13-7 with three shutouts and a 2.26 GAA.

Over four seasons in the NHL, all with Ottawa, Emery has a 59-27-10 mark with eight shutouts and a 2.59 GAA.

He was Ottawa’s fourth round choice, 99th overall, in the 2001 draft.

St. Louis, MO - The St. Louis Blues obtained goaltender Hannu Toivonen from the Boston Bruins for center Carl Soderberg on Monday.

Toivonen, who spent parts of the last two seasons with the Bruins, was 3-9-1 with a 4.23 goals-against average in 18 games for Boston last season. At Providence in the AHL, he was 13-13-1 with a .909 save percentage and a 2.37 goals-against average.

He had appeared in a total of 38 games for Boston and notched a 12-14-5 record with one shutout and a 3.33 GAA.

The 23-year-old became expendable when Boston acquired goaltender Manny Fernandez from Minnesota at the end of June. With Tim Thomas as the backup and youngster Tuukka Rask looking to get some playing time, Toivonen would have had a hard time getting ice time.

Soderberg, 21, played the past two seasons with Malmo IF of the Swedish Elite League. In 31 games with Malmo last season he tallied 12 goals and 18 assists.

The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Soderberg was Sweden’s second-highest scorer during the World Junior Championships in 2005.

He was drafted by St. Louis in the second round in 2004.

St. Paul, MN - The Minnesota Wild signed defenseman Nick Schultz to a one-year deal on Monday, three days before a scheduled arbitration hearing.

Schultz, 24, has played all five of his NHL seasons with Minnesota. He was the club’s second round pick in the 2000 draft.

In 367 career games, he has 17 goals and 45 assists with a plus-25 rating.

“Nick’s continued improvement and durability make him the consummate team player,” general manager Doug Risebrough said in a statement. “He’s established himself as an important presence on our blue line, and we’re very happy that we could reach a contract agreement.”

He ranks third on the Wild’s all-time list in games played and career plus/minus.

Pittsburgh, PA - The Pittsburgh Penguins re-signed defenseman Alain Nasreddine to a one-year contract Monday.

The 32-year old Nasreddine, a native of Montreal, scored one goal and had four assists in 44 games for Pittsburgh in 2006-07 following his recall from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League (AHL).

Originally a sixth round draft pick of the Florida Panthers, Nasreddine has played for the New York Islanders, Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks during his 12-year professional career.