teams under cap floor

[fzusher]

I was looking for the report Dobber mentioned in the ramblings because I wanted to see which players they didn\'t count under ATL and PHX cap - on my calculation PHX are above the cap floor and ATL not in a problem to reach it. I didn\'t find that report - the Globe don\'t put the Sunday edition on-line, it seems. I did spot a headline that caught my attention.

link

Essentially, a non-hockey story about Russia\'s largest steel-maker offering 1.3 Billion US to take over a Canadian metallurgical coal company so that it provide coal for the steel-maker\'s US plants.

Why am I wasting your time with this? You may recognize the Russian company\'s name - Severstal. Owners of KHL\'s Severstal Cherepovets, Nagy\'s new team, and not one of the KHL\'s big spenders this summer. Guess they are a team with money to spend in the future after all.

As for ATL and PHX\'s cap situation, here\'s what I know:

ATL - 35.913M (4.7M under the floor) committed to 18 one-way contracts (plus Zhitnik\'s buyout): 12 Fs - Kovalchuk, White, Williams, Kozlov, Armstrong, Perrin, Christensen, Thorburn, Larsen Reasoner, Slater, Boulton; 4 Ds - Hainsey, Klee, Havelid, Exelby; 2 Gs - Lehtonen, Hedberg. However, Little and Enstrom, who are on two-ways are all but guaranteed to be in the line-up, and they count for 0.9M each, leaving them with 2.9M in cap to make up with 3 D bodies. Zach Bogosian himself, if he makes the team, will likely make up most of that himself, if he gets bonuses typical of a top-5 draftee.

PHX - 35.38M committed to 15 one-way contracts, but that doesn\'t include Mueller, Turris, Winnick, Hanzal and Yandle, who are all on two-ways (entry-levels) but pretty much guaranteed to be in the line-up and who combine for almost 6M in cap taking them over the limit as is, without counting 2 winger spots that are up for grabs in camp between MacLean, Porter, Kolarik, Lisin, Boedker, Tikhonov and Joel Perrault.

So really, LAK are the only ones with question marks regarding the cap floor, but even there I don\'t think there\'s much to worry about. There\'s many entry-level and two-way contracts there, but I have them at 29.875M committed to 16 players (Kopitar, Brown, Calder, Frolov, Handzus, Ellis, Armstrong, Zeiler, Ivanans, JJ, Preising, Green, Gauthier, Harrold, LaBarbara, Ersberg, plus buyouts to McCaulley and Cloutier). The 7 missing players are 4 Fs and 3Ds, and they need to count for 10.8M to put LA above the floor. The 4 Fs would be Purcell (1.35M) and RFAs Torres, O\'Sullivan and Richardson. Doughty would make up one of the D spots. Given that Torres, O\'Sullivan and Doughty themselves are bound to combine for a cap hit of at least 6M, and very likely more than 7, they\'ll have at most 3.5M, possibly less than 2.5M to make up by adding 2 D bodies, though in all likelihood they won\'t want anyone signed beyond this season. That still shouldn\'t be a problem with plenty of teams looking to dump salary and willing to waive players for it.

Personally I expect LAK, once they\'ve signed their RFAs and Doughty and thus know where they are cap wise, to give Daryl Sutter a call and tell him which one of Warrener or Eriksson they want. The only glitch here is that the one team that has precedence over the Kings in terms of waiver priority - TBL - is also looking for a waiver wire D pick up. That may force the Kings, if Eriksson\'s 1.5M is enough to get them above the floor, to trade for him - something along the lines of a 6th rounder for Eriksson and a 7th rounder ...

[Dakkster]

Great writeup, fzusher. One little thing though. One of those Kings forwards you\'re talking about is Stoll, not Torres, right?

[fzusher]

Yeah, Stoll

[The Comish]

I\'m a little late in reading this, but I find the Kings situation very interesting.

How is LA going to spend $13M to reach the cap floor? Doughty yes and O\'Sullivan, Stoll and Richardson still need to be re-signed, but that shouldn\'t total $13M.

Obviously they could use a stop-gap number one goalie, but is that really the best course of action for this team? Should they not tank it one more year and grab Tavares or Hedman in order to become Pittsburgh West?

They would certainly be in an awesome position to compete for years to come!

Toronto management should be taking notes on how to build a team. You MUST lose and lose completely (last, second last), not compete for the final playoff spot every year.

See Ottawa. See Pittsburgh, soon see L.A.