The bright spot of this season has been the drastically improved defense of the team. Gabby seems to have gotten the player to fully buy into the scheme, which says something good about these skaters used to being an offensive juggernaut.  Of course, the coach can only work with the pieces he has, and GMGM has been fairly exacting in trying to make sure the team has those pieces.  Not everything pans out (Joe Corvo) but that's to be expected.

Scott Hannan, however, seems to have settled in and is doing very well with the Caps.  I think the consensus is that this was a good trade, in part because Hannan has had the time to settle in and learn how to work with everyone. Based on what I've seen, I think that Hannan at 32 years of age is probably still a top-4 defenseman, although certainly overpaid by his current contract.  So the question is two-fold, given how he's played so far, should the Caps seek to sign Scott Hannan, and if so what is a good contract?

For some comparison, from Capgeek:

Tom Poti; age 33; $2.875M for both of the next 2 seasons.

Jeff Schultz; age 24; $2.75M for each of the next 3 seasons.

John Erskine; age 30; $1.5M for both of the next 2 seasons.

Francois Beauchemin; age 30, $3.8M for next season.

I'm not including Mike Green or John Carlson for comparison because they are on a higher tier than Hannan.  I'm not quite sure where Karl Alzner fits on this spectrum, but his RFA deal will certainly be interesting as well.

I've thrown out some ranges for the poll, but obviously more detailed thoughts can go in the comments.

(Edit: I've modified the decline to resign option to include the inability to sign possibility, as per the first comment.)