Let's talk about cap, baby

Okay, now we can talk about where we are with the cap. The answer is: pretty good. Staal came in under what people expected, and with that done and Redden on his way out, we have a little breathing room. Which is good, because we also have a lot of question marks, from Todd White to Derek Stepan without even getting to defense. I'm going to retire the theoretical Wade Redden argument at this point: we'd have to make so many moves to squeeze him in that his only hope for staying on the team is to somehow outplay Rozsival into the minors. I know it's not official yet, but I'm done considering Redden as a legitimate possibility. If he comes out playing like Nicklas Lidstrom, then we'll talk.

Moving on, I've said before that I think there are 12 forwards we can comfortably expect on the roster (Gaborik, Drury, Frolov, Callahan, Prospal, Avery, Dubinsky, Boogaard, Christensen, Anisimov, Prust, Boyle), and their total cap hit comes to $30,434,167. I'm backing down from certainty on defensemen, whether it be named Gilroy or Eminger, but I think it's safe to say that Rozsival, Staal, Girardi, and Del Zotto will make the cut (totaling $13,387,500). The goalie situation remains clear: Lundqvist and Biron for a total hit of $7.75 million. This brings us to $51,571,667 for 12 forwards, 4 defensemen, and 2 goalies.

With a salary cap of $59.4 million, we are left with $7,828,333 of space. With this, we need to sign at least 2 defensemen and can then sign up to 3 more skaters. The defensemen we're considering would include Gilroy ($1.75m), McDonagh ($1.3m), Eminger ($1.125m), Semenov (UFA), and Exelby (UFA). I envision us ending up with Eminger, one of Gilroy or McDonagh, and one of Semenov or Exelby.

This would leave us something in the 3-4 million dollar range for adding an eighth defenseman (not likely if I remember how John Tortorella works) or some extra forwards. Todd White would take a healthy $2.375 million of that, and Mats Zuccarello would take $1.75m. Under that, we can consider Derek Stepan ($820,833), Evgeny Grachev ($816,667), Tim Kennedy ($550,000), or Ruslan Fedotenko (UFA).

So we find ourselves in a position with which we're not terribly familiar: we can actually pick our roster based on how people perform at our training camp. Go fucking figure! We've got a core of people we can assume are making the cut, and thanks to a totally reasonable (and a good million or more lower than many people expected) contract for Staal and the assumed departure of Wade "Estar Dando Bye Bye" Redden, we have the money left to see who plays well at camp and give out roster spots based on that.

Oh my god, are we going to have a roster I'm actually excited about this season?