Waiver wire

So today at 3:00 is the deadline for finishing up your team: by 3:00 today, your roster must contain no more than 23 people, and your cap hit must be legal (up until now, the teams are afforded a summer cap allowance of 10%, giving them $65.34 million to work with). So, naturally, yesterday, a lot of teams placed players on waivers, in order to get down to those numbers.

The Rangers (though, as I've explained here, they had perfectly legal recourse in simply placing Drury and Prospal on IR) chose to make such a move, waiving both Todd White and Tim Kennedy. This brings the Rangers roster to 23, at $57,201,667 (the cap, you'll recall, is $59.4 million). So, we're extremely safe.

But we were fine before. Why did we do this? Basically, because it gives us room just in case. Because of today's 3:00 deadline, lots of teams will be putting people on waivers over yesterday and today. Maybe we'd want one? This gives us some room to try to grab somebody and not have to worry about being over roster or cap.

Meanwhile, it does add the risk of White or Kennedy being picked up by some other team (well, realistically, probably only Kennedy suffers that risk). However, both players just now officially cleared. I'm a little surprised no one picked up Kennedy at $550,000, but so it goes. Now, they remain New York Rangers property - that means we can assign them to Hartford, or we can just keep them on the roster. A player clearing waivers does not require his team to send that player to the minors - he can stay on the roster. If a player remains on an NHL roster (or, if he is sent to the minors and then recalled, probably having to clear re-entry waivers as well) for 30 days or 10 NHL games, his roster clearance will expire, and he will have to clear again if he is to be sent down.

Now, here's what I don't get: why Kennedy? Of the $2.925 million the Rangers would free up by demoting White and Kennedy, $2.375 of it comes from White. Why risk putting Kennedy on the block to get stolen by some other team, just to clear up $550,000 "in case"? Unless Sather wanted to clear up the additional roster spot, this doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Regardless, we dodged that minor bullet, and Kennedy cleared and remains Rangers property.

So, White and Kennedy were just waived in case the Rangers want to pick someone up before 3:00 today - both are, in fact, skating with the Rangers this morning. I'm still unclear as to whether or not we're making such a move - the rumor mill is pretty silent about the Rangers actually doing anything, and I'm not sure what we'd do if we did make a move. Also, if we don't do anything by then, I don't know if we submit our official opening night roster minus White and Kennedy, or with Prospal and Drury on IR.

I guess we'll find out pretty soon? The point is, for now, White and Kennedy have cleared waivers, and we're 2 and a half hours away from the opening night roster deadline. Anyone know what the Devils are doing about that problem?