too bad we blew so much money on hendricks, gaustad, nystrom
we won't have the space to sign a guy like vanek, thornton, kessel, ect unless we let a guy like legwand walk .. we have almost zero contracts coming off the books the next 2 years. the 9 million dollar 4th line is gonna keep us from signing anyone other than maybe a Daniel briere 2.0
I am tired of hearing about the 9 mllion dollar 4th line the only player on that line that I have a problem with is Gaustad and that contract was done to try and keep Suter here and if he would stay healthy I might not mind it.
Lets say for argument sake that the cap will go up to 70 Million. If Gaustad has another injury year we could buy him out with compliance buy out next year. So this all together would give us per cap geek $20,832,024 in cap space with the following list of Free agents of our own.
UFA: David Legwand, Carter Hutton
RFA: Nick Spaling, Taylor Beck, Simon Moser, Ryan Ellis, Mattias Ekholm
I see no problem with spending some money on Free Agents. I am listing the cap hit for each this year along with their age now.
1a.Vanek-$7.142857 29
1b.Kessel-$5.4 25
3.Pominville-$5.3 30
4.Thornton-$7.0 34
5.Stastny-$6.6 27
6.Phaneuf-$6.5 28
7.Cammalleri-$6.0 31
8.Kulemin-$2.8 27
9.Grabovski-$3.0 29
10.Ott-$2.95 31
11.Vrbata-$3.0 32
12.Legwand-$4.5 33
13.Seidenberg-$3.25 32
14. Niskanen-$2.3 26
Now that I have done this I am going to update my list because some will be older than I thought next year plus I added one more player.
1a. Kessel- top line guy who can score need I say more plus he is still young
1b. Vanek- top line guy, scorer, he is good, love this guy but Kessel took over 1a because he is alot younger
3. Pominville- would look nice beside Wilson
4. Phaneuf- If we cannot get any offensive people here could you imagine a Weber-Josi, Jones-Phaneuf top four
5. Statsny- decent option if others will not come here
6. Thornton- older but still has something left
7. Grabovski- depends alot on what he does this year. I think Caps will be happy with him a the #2C
8. Cammalleri- decent second tier player
9. Kulemin- could be a good player to have on the team if he rebounds this year
10. Ott - a possible Gaustad replacement if he is bought out. I like him alot
11. Legwand- as long as he wants to be a Pred let him as long as it is Cap friendly.
12. Seidenberg- Solid Veteran
13. Vrbata- decent second tier player
14. Niskanen- good solid defenseman
Depending on what we do with our own Free Agents we could Easily get 2-3 players off this list.
Give Legwand a cap friendly cap deal around 4 years that will only be around $3 million. Ellis and Ekholm all depend on this year. Ellis will probably demand more money due to time on team. Moser if good enough this year we can re-sign and not break the bank. Beck will be here unless traded but will not get a big raise. Spaling and Hutton ????? If Hellberg is ready next year Hutton can walk, unless he does really really great this year. Plus Watson should be ready next year. If we re-sign everyone we plan on keeping for less than 6-7 Million cap wise we will still have around 13-14 Milliion to through at Free Agency. So who knows what will happen.