The Wild and Stephance Veilleux have reached a deal, Saturday night, to keep the winger in Minnesota. Beating out the Monday deadline for arbitration. He has been given a one year deal worth $737,000, a slight cut from the year before. After the 2008-09 season he will be an unrestricted free agent if not signed before the yearly July 1 deadline.

This leaves Pierre-Marc Bouchard as the only unrestricted free agent left on the team. His arbitration hearing is set for July 28th.

Despite being left to the dogs during waivers, Veilleux has been given an interesting opportunity this season. He scored a career high 11 goals last season, as has been an increasingly important presence on the team each year. If he can manage to have an even better year this year he could force the Wild into a slightly better deal, or maybe at least catch another teams attention next year when he is left to free agency.

Wild winger Stephane Veilleux was put on waivers yesterday, as the Wild chose not to claim him, taking the calculated risk that no one would make an offer to him. And no one did. Today he remains Wild property, which doesn’t seem to distress Veilleux too much. He has said that it doesn’t matter he’s glad to still be with the Wild (technically) and looks forward to negotiating. So, despite his efforts to meet the Wild half way by representing himself, the Wild are still playing tough. Assistant GM Tom Lynn has said that Veilleux’s initial demands were “unreasonable” and believes that not being picked up on waivers will lower the going price for Veilleux during arbitration. So, it seems that Veilleux, despite have a career high season last year, may be taking something of a pay cut for the coming season (and likely a one year deal where he is going to have to have an even better season than last year), but it appears as though Veilleux will be back in a Wild uniform for the coming season. That is, unless something unexpected happens, which is probably just as likely as striking an easy deal.

Wild winger Stephane Veilleux has been proactive in his attempts to stay in Minnesota. As a restricted free agent he had decided to fire his agent, Paul Corbeil (who takes 4% of his salary), and prepare to negotiate a contract himself. He has said he intends to stay in Minnesota, a team he is proud to play for, and thinks that he can negotiate a way to stay in Minnesota all by himself. (Star Tribune reported on this today)

The Wild have not been overly eager to keep many of their restricted and unrestricted agents around, it appears that Veilleux (who scored a career high 11 goals last season) will do whatever it takes to stay in town. Not a bad thing, a solid winger with a good +/-, who is a standard standby for the checking line.