Tanguay - OPEN - Iginla
Glencross - Backlund (RFA) - OPEN
Cammilleri - Stajan - OPEN
Jackman - Horak (2way) - Jones (RFA)
Bouma (2way) - OPEN
Bouwmeester - Butler
Giordano - Brodie
Babchuk - Smith
OPEN
Players that are gone and very unlikely to be back on the roster:
Sarich UFA, Stempniak UFA, Hannan UFA
Players unlikely to be resigned but may resurface:
Moss UFA, TKO UFA, Comeau (RFA but his qualifying offer is expensive)
Players that are not signed but may return:
Jokinen
The Flames have 3 starting line up spots up for consideration: 1 C, 2 W
The also have 2 reserve spots up for consideration 1F, 1D
Assumptions:
1) Backlund will be qualified/signed somewhere around his current cap hit of 1.271 (rounded to 1.3). If simply qualified his cap hit is around 900k.
2) Jones will be qualified for 1 year and this gives him a cap hit of 580k
3) Horak is on a 2 way contract but considering he spent most of last year in the NHL the same can likely be assumed for next year.
4) Bouma is likely in a similar boat to Horak.
*****************************END OF CURRENT STATE******************************
Moves I think the Flames should do:
1) Resign Jokinen - estimated cap hit is 5M. May be able to get this lower if we offer longer term.
2) One of Baertschi (skill) or Aliu (size) will make the roster out of camp and claim the 3rd line W spot.
3) One of Aliu or TKO will take the 4th line W spot (moving Jackman to reserve) or reserve spot.
4) Promote an AHL dman for the reserve dman spot. (Connelly, Carson, Wilson, etc). This is likely enough that it should almost be an assumption.
5) This leaves the 2nd line RW spot up for question. I think this is where Feaster really needs to go hard after offensive FA's if he wants to transform this team and make them better. We do have the cap space available assuming no cap increase to pay a player 7M. Feaster may also be able to use the carrot of getting Jokinen a high end line mate to drive Jokinens cap hit down as well but we cant assume that.
The idea is to replace Moss (a 40 pt player when healthy) with a guy that can be a 60pt or better player. There are only 2 major contenders that can do that: Semin and Parise.
There are other players like Hedjuk, Boyes, Huselius, etc that can likely give us more offensive punch than Moss but its not as much of a step up and they all have their own warts.
With Semin its possible that we can pay alot on a very short term (1-2 year) prove it contract. That said Semin is a plan B as the real gem here is Parise. Perhaps one thing going in our favour if we extend Butter is that Parise had his career high 94 pts under him in 08-09.
The real question is will be able to put enough money on the table to attract him. New Jersey doesnt have alot of cap space of their own to play with either and they may be forced to walk away if talks start to look at a cap hit of 9M (note: Crosby and Malkin are 8.7, Ovechkin is 9, so I think this is the ceiling) which is where I think we will need to be to get Parise.
Considerations:
Im not a believer that players simply lose skill as they get older. What I do think they lose is the bounce back ability. What we saw when the Flames were on in March was a) yes the young players came in and made an impact but
Butter was playing the crap out of his vets. Its entirely possible that a major factor to the drop off at the end was due to a compressed schedule and them losing their legs. What I think we need to do as our core gets older and I think Feaster is of similar mind is to overload on high end game changer players. Let our older vets play less minutes to increase their quality of play. While you have one line play 20 minutes ATOI one game, shift them to say 14-15mins the next or average them out at 17. To do this you need to have multiple high end players. This is something a guy like Parise will do for us and the only thing it will cost is cash.
One of the Flames strengths of late has been to get ok to good performance from replacement level dmen. This trend allows us to move cap dollars from dmen to bring in the shift from 1.5M Moss to 9M Parise.
I think Butter is a good coach but I would explore a guy like Tony Granato (former HC, that is AC of a winning program) to replace him. Failing a good fit, reup Butter on a 1-2 year contract. Be prepared to eat the 2nd year contract if things dont turn around.
How all of this looks on paper:
Tanguay Backlund Iginla
Glencross Jokinen Parise
Cammilleri Stajan Baertschi
Aliu Horak Jones
Bouma Jackman
Bouwmeester Butler
Giordano Brodie
Babchuk Smith
Carson
Kipper
Karlsson
3.5 1.3 7
2.5 5 9
6 3.5 1.45
0.95 0.8 0.58
0.693 0.615
6.68 1.25
4.02 0.733
2.5 0.775
0.575
5.833
0.863
Total: 66.167M
Overage: 1.867
To address the overage there are 3 scenarios that can be reasonably explored.
1) Try and Get Olli back down to 3M cap hit. Perhaps it takes a 6 year contract that pays 5, 5, 3, 3, 1, 1 to do so. This can be a happy medium for both player and team and should save us 2M on the cap hit.
2) Hope the cap value increases next year to provide space (hopefully this plus Olli can be enough breathing room)
3) Trade Babchuk (or bury in minors) and replace with AHL contract player like Connelly to save ~1.9M
* Trading of Kipper or Bouw can also be looked at to free cap space but those arent moves that make the team as competitive.
* Consider playing with only 22 players on the roster to start the season to create some breathing room (not likely or the best plan of action)
If the rails should somehow come off the rails again this year, you let Iggy have the Ray Bourque option at Trade Deadline. Bring him back in the off season and perhaps he can give back to the team in a similar fashion as Tkachuk did. Sign one year contracts while the team rebuilds and at trade deadline we send him to a contender to help him get his cup.
That is my gameplan for next year. What do you guys think.
