Ambassador Of Fun
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- Jun 23, 2010
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- 11
Being able to expect 21M in cap space to open up next season with only one real hole to fill is actually pretty amazing. Granted a third of that should go towards Spezza, but still, that leaves us with a ton of cap space to use our glut of depth on an upgrade.
Also, there seem to be a lot of borderline UFA top-pairing defenders next summer. Martin, Ehrhoff, Methot, Boychuk, Green, Staal, Sekera, Oduya, and Beauchemin. I'd really like to see us try and sign one of them more as a luxury than as a need - it'd go a long way towards being our defense back on top to how it should be, even though it may block out one of our young defenders.
I'm seeing 30M in cap space, and I bet we can assume a 3M+ increase in the cap. We would need to sign Spezza, Dillon, Nemeth, Oleksiak and replacements for Gonchar, Horcoff, Peverley, and Cole. We should be able to sign guys to replace/replace internally Gonchar, Horcoff, Peverley, and Cole for ~10M. Say roughly ~7M for Spezza. ~5M for Dillon, Nemeth, and Oleksiak. I would not be surprised if we tried to acquire a big name youngish defender with ~12M in cap space and glut of prospects/young players we would have. Though we probably want to save a bit of space for what we will have to pay Benn and Seguin in 3 and 4 years respectively.