Icey said:
You obviously don't remember what Guerin is like on the ice. He floats too often and when the game is on the line he rarely is the difference maker, unless of course your referring to the trips to the penalty box. I say get rid of him especially due to the rumored tension between him and Modano all last season.
I disagree. Guerin was your leading scorer. Turg was 6th. Guerin provides leadership and will step in as the captain if Modano isn't back.
Icey said:
At this point, he may be willing to re-work his contract for them. He also is no longer the scapgoat for the Stars.
If Turg would re-work his contract to create some cap space, then yeah, he'd gain some fan support.
As far as the rest of the Stars' moves that I talked about. I didn't really want to go into all the math, but since you asked for it.. Assuming buyouts don't count against the cap, and that Turg is bought out, this is what the Stars look like with the rollback..
Guerin - $6.74
Lehtinen - $3.57
Turco - $3.16
Boucher - $1.82
Barnes - $1.14
Klemm - $1.12
Daley - $0.456
Svoboda - $0.456
That totals out to $19.04..
Modano - $6.84
Zubov - $4.56
Morrow - $1.40
Now you're at $31.83..
Add in your other RFA's - none of which have done anything since their last contracts to deserve big raises..
Kapanen - $570
Erskine - $552
Ellis - $437
Smith - $418
Ott - $530
Miettinen - $624
Lessard - $570 (paycut there - the kid didn't do jack in the AHL)
Now you're at $34.96..
With the cap at $39.5 minus the $2.2 for player costs, you have 18 players under contract and $2.34M in cap space. If you have to give 110% QO's to your small time RFA's, then that gives you another $370k hit and about $2M in cap space..
Buying out Guerin instead of Turgeon gives you an extra $1.41 in cap space.. Buying both of them out gives you a whopping $12M in cap space.
Regardless of which of the two you'd rather see go - I think it's obvious that the Stars will be happy with the number of core players that they'll be able to keep if they buy out one of the two..
(04-05 salaires based on
http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/Payroll/index.htm)