- Locked up. I heard it was the possibility of being courted by Edmonton that scared him away from free agency.Luckily, I procrastinated a few hours and am now able to post something closer to the real thing:
Sources add that the deal is worth approximately $35 million for six years - or an average annual cap hit for the Flames of about $5.8 million per year beyond this season - and that it's heavily weighted in the early years of the contract and that Kiprusoff could retire after the fifth year and it wouldn't cost him significant dollars.
Initial reaction: Yay! Franchise type goalie and all that. The cap hit is comparable to Kipper's peers and therefore not unreasonable. In fact, it looks like a bit of an Iggy/Regehr discount considering what he might have commanded on the open market this coming off-season.
Other reactions: Uhhh...how are the Flames going to afford a team next year? If the purported cap hit for the Kiprusoff deal is accurate, that means Calgary has 25.65M tied up in Iginla (7), Regehr (4), Sarich (3.6), Tanguay (5.25) and Kipper (5.8) alone. Add in Warrener (2.35), Aucoin (4), Eriksson (1.5), Primeau (1.4), Yelle (1.4), Nilson (1) and Lombardi (1.817) and you have a 39.117M payroll without the likes of Phaneuf, Huselius, Langkow, Nolan, Conroy, Hale, Godard and Smith. That's anywhere from 12 - 15M, depending on the wherever the cap lands, to fill 8 roster spots. And I'm willing to bet Phaneuf will come in around 4.5M (minimum) when (if?) he gets re-signed. Meaning about 8 - 10M to fill 7 spaces, 3 or 4 in the top 6 forward area.
EDIT - scratch Yelle. This is the last year of his contract as well.
This could get concerning.
Update - Sutter confirmed the numbers during the presser.
6 comments:
someone has got to get dealt. scratch iggy, regehr, kipper and sarich from that list. aucoin, warrener and eriksson are untradeable. primeau could only get dumped in a package deal. phaneuf better get signed for 4.5, cause if he wants it, he'll get it whether we like it or not...
tanguay seems like the odd man out, to me. unless sutter can do a langkow/huselius + aucoin type deal around the trade deadline....
Tanguay has a NTC I believe.
Unless the Flames are out of the hunt, I don't expect Sutter to be dealing major pieces at the deadline either.
I think Phaneuf is the next order of biz. All of the other 'big' pieces got at least 5 year deals, so lets assume Dion gets offered a 5 year deal structured something like Regehr's; 5,3.5,4,4.5,5 : thats a cap number of 4.4. Could we get him for less than that? Maybe.. but not a lot less, I think cap wise 4.0 is probably the floor. So do we trade Langkow or Huselius? Or package both and try to turn to two salaries into one?
No doubt Dion's up next. I also think his salary will be in the 4-5M range.
I think Langkow and Huselius will both end up walking if Sutter can't shed some deadweight in the off-season and replace it with more cap-friendly pieces (see Warrener, Eriksson, Primeau).
That said, I think the Flames will have to decide between Lanks and Juice one way or the other. I personally prefer keeping Huselius because I think the organizational depth at LW is really lacking.
Argh, sorry MG I used the same kipper pic in my post. I will change if you want. My bad.
Argh, sorry MG I used the same kipper pic in my post. I will change if you want. My bad.
No big deal. It's a great pic and should get as much exposure as possible.
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