Anton Khudobin

This all seems too familiar.

It will be three years next month when I originally wrote a column on what a mistake it was extending Andrew Ference. And at the time, it sort of was. Ference finished the 2009-10 season playing in only 51 games, recording eight assists and no goals. He was even worse in the postseason after his contract extension. He never played in a game in which he could be considered a “plus” player and finished those 13 games with a -9.

The stats weren’t pretty, but Boston Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli must have saw something in the oft-injured defenseman that warranted an $850,000 raise that bumped Ference’s annual salary to $2.25 million. Turns out Chiarelli was right all along.