CAPGEEK.COM USER GENERATED ROSTER
My Custom Lineup
FORWARDS
Jamie McGinn ($1.750m) / Matt Duchene ($3.500m) / P-A Parenteau ($4.000m)
David Jones ($4.000m) / Paul Stastny ($6.600m) / Nathan Horton ($5.000m)
Gabriel Landeskog ($3.575m) / Ryan O'Reilly ($5.000m) / Steve Downie ($2.650m)
Cody McLeod ($1.150m) / John Mitchell ($1.100m) / Chuck Kobasew ($1.150m)
Mark Olver ($0.600m) /
DEFENSEMEN
Mark Streit ($4.100m) / Erik Johnson ($3.750m)
Ladislav Smid ($3.500m) / Ryan Wilson ($2.250m)
Jan Hejda ($3.250m) / Tyson Barrie ($0.900m)
Shane O'Brien ($2.000m) /
GOALTENDERS
Semyon Varlamov ($2.833m)
Jean-Sebastien Giguere ($1.500m)
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2013-2014
CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)
(these totals are compiled with the bonus cushion)
SALARY CAP: $64,300,000; CAP PAYROLL: $61,464,317; BONUSES: $2,710,000
CAP SPACE (23-man roster): $5,545,667
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CALCULATOR LOG
* Chuck Kobasew signed as free agent for $1,150,000.
* Traded Matt Hunwick
* Traded Ryan O'Byrne
* Greg Zanon bought out.
* Mark Streit signed as free agent for $4,100,000.
* Ladislav Smid signed as free agent for $3,500,000.
* Nathan Horton signed as free agent for $5,000,000.
This could be our roster next season, if we were to fill out our missing pieces via free-agency. Everyone is locked in for at least another year. Plenty of cap space really...
2014-2015 (w/Raises and extensions kicking in)
CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)
(these totals are compiled with the bonus cushion)
SALARY CAP: $70,000,000; CAP PAYROLL: $69,364,317
Duchene - 2M raise (5.5M), Landeskog - 2M raise (5.525M), McGinn - 2M raise (4M), Varly -2M raise (4.833M), Downie - 1M raise (3.65M)
O'Reilly extended for 5yrs 25M (5M), Stastny extended for 5 years 27.5M (5.5M)
9M in raises and 1.1M pay cut from Stastny, means we need 7.9M to dish out. That's 69M in payroll having both Jones & O'Brien as players that are just good enough we could dump their salary if need be pretty quickly if the cap didn't go up to 70M
The cap was going to go up to 70M from last season by itself, I have no doubt it will again with the way pretty much nothing has changed in how popular the NHL is due to the lockout.
But even if it didn't go up enough in 2014 we have 6M in payroll we can dump without feeling it to much. We will still have Sgarbossa in the minors and Elliott & Siemens in the minors as well.
Drop Jones & O'Brien, and add Sgarbossa in Jones's place. We are back down to 63.9M even after giving everyone raises and adding 12.6M in free-agent contracts.
So no I don't think we have to move Jones unless we can find a free-agent or a rookie to fill his role within the next two years. There is plenty of room to keep all three of our centers as well.
As long as O'Reilly earns it 5M AAV is manageable, yeah if Stastny and O'Reilly's contract demands are out of control then it's a whole new ball game. But if everything is within reason, we can keep our centers and even add to our roster.
We have something like 7M plus tied up in four 6/7th defenders right now. Hunwick, O'Brien, O'Byrne, Zannon... Drop three of them and sign a couple top 4 defenders like I've shown. Those are the guys I like personally but their salaries give a good example of what we can afford to do.
We will probably need to get rid of Jones eventually, but we may not have to for a couple years. This team simply cannot be a cap-floor team going forward, and they have proven they will spend if they feel the player is worth it now.