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Sens Underground Forums > Looking at the numbers...
It's gonna be an interesting summer.
According to NHL numbers, we have $49.5M committed, leaving us with 5M-6M or so to play with assuming that the cap drops no more than $1M. Shannon resigned for $625K, up from $600k. Surprised they could sign him for such a small increase, but he becomes a UFA the year after that. I wonder if that was part of the deal. The following year, Kovalev's $5M would be off the books.
Lets hope we can sign Foligno, Regin and Winchester for less than $400-500K increase between them. Campoli, let him walk. What do you do with Lee? His NHL salary is $850K. He's certainly not worth that. Under the CBA, I don't think the Sens can offer him less and keep his rights.
Bottom line is that we only have 4 defencemen signed with A-Train being the big fish. Unless they offer him a longer term front end loaded contract that ends up having a cap hit of $3-3.5M or something.
What ever happens, there's no way that Cheechoo comes back or that we buy him out. He'll either end up playing in Binghamton or I think we can lend him to a European team without affecting our cap space.
Here's another good site. http://www.capgeek.com/cap_calculator.php?Team=23
You can build your roster with speculative salaries and click on generate roster at the bottom to see where we might sit as far as the cap goes.
You think it's gonna be tough for us. Chicago has 57.5 committed for next year.
Canadian Homer
Homer: very cool link.
If Volchenkov won't sign for $3.5M, there is Sutton to replace him for a year or two until Cowan or Wiercioch are ready to play for the big team. We don't need both big-name shutdown/shot-blocking guys, so it's good to have one if the other doesn't work out. If only on one year contracts, sign Foligno and Regin, Winchester if he'll take what he's getting now as I'm not convinced he's worth more than that, and let Lee go as I think Campoli is a better value for the same money. Cheechoo, unfortunately, is a big heavy contract that just doesn't fit with the future of the team. After next year, with Kovalev gone, there will be more room for salary adjustments.
Hennessey and Brodeur are 2-way / minor league contracts and I only see Brodeur as being worthwhile to keep. As much as I like Donovan's game, he's been sitting most of the year so he'll not be back either except as depth again and that'll be the same price as this year. I don't see Cullen being back either unless some other salary is gone. I was hoping to see Lee and/or O'Brien packaged in one of the trades that happened just before the deadline instead of the 2nd round picks as I don't see either of them being NHL material other than injury replacements.
Using $3.5M for Volchenkov or Sutton, I put together this lineup with modest increases for Shannon (already signed) Winchester, Regin, Campoli and Foligno. It left $4M space under the current cap.
Kardinal
Kuba will likely be on the move. Volchenkov isn't going anywhere I don't think.
Sensfanatic
The Sens are kind of in trouble next season: http://nhlnumbers.com/overview.php?team=OTT&season=0910
Forget signing Volchenkov - they've got others to worry about as well.
Foligno, Regin, Winchester, Hennessy, Brodeur, Campoli, Sutton, to name a few.
Just adding up the numbers for the singed players, it doesn't leave a lot of room to sign some of the young guys....
You can kind of see why Volchenkov wasn't traded - Sens need him for the playoffs. But you can also see why he hasn't re-signed - the salary offer was probably way below his market value expectation. We'll probably see him walk in the summer.