Oh Man Let's Do Some Numbers Today

It's Friday -- Friday. Gotta do math on Friday.

As you've probably heard, of the five restricted free agents we gave qualifying offers to (Matt Gilroy has since signed a 1-year, $1 million deal with the Lightning (a deal I'd be surprised if we didn't also offer him, but whatever)), the four who were eligible filed for arbitration: that's Dubinsky, Callahan, Boyle, and Sauer. Anisimov was ineligible. I wouldn't expect any of those people to actually hit arbitration: it's just another step before we offer, ideally, all 5 of those guys reasonable deals, and they all stay on.

As you may or may not have heard, step one of five happened this morning, and we signed Mike Sauer to a 2-year deal at $1.25 million per year. Awesome, perfect. Then, a few hours later, we agreed to terms with Anisimov: 2 years, $1.875 per. Sweet. Three to go. So, that, along with the Feds re-signing and the acquisitions of Rupp and Richards, put us in a place where we should, if you'll forgive the glorious double meaning, re-Cap.

First, recall the numbers we're working with: this season's cap is $64.3 million, which puts the summer cap at $70.73 million. Next, we look at the one-way contracts we've got on the roster, which count against the summer cap no matter what:

Forwards
Marian Gaborik - $7.5 m
Brad Richards - $6,666,667
Wojtek Wolski - $3.8 m
Sean Avery - $1.9375 m
Artem Anisimov - $1.875 m
Michael Rupp - $1.5 m
Ruslan Fedotenko - $1.4 m
Erik Christensen - $0.925 m
Brandon Prust - $0.8 m

Defensemen
Wade Redden - $6.5 m
Marc Staal - $3.975 m
Dan Girardi - $3.325 m
Mike Sauer - $1.25 m

Goalies
Henrik Lundqvist - $6.875 m
Martin Biron - $0.875 m

Chris Druries
Chris Drury - $3,716,667

That puts us at $52,920,834 currently tied up by one-way contracts under the summer cap. Of that, failing moving someone like Wolski, we can expect $46,420,834 to still be around under the season cap, when Redden's contract stops counting.

Then, we've got the two-way contracts. For each of these guys, I'll list their full potential cap hit for this season, followed by, in parentheses, what I am guessing their summer cap hit is. Unfortunately, summer cap hit is based on number of days the player was on the previous season's roster, which is data I don't know how to find. So, I'm basing it on games played. This is going to be inaccurate for everyone except Derek Stepan (who played 100% of last season, which is easy to calculate), but it's something.

Mats Zuccarello - $1.75 m (around $0.5 m?)
Derek Stepan - $0.875 m ($0.875 m)
Ryan McDonagh - $1.3 m (around $0.45 m?)
Michael Del Zotto - $1.0875 m (around $0.55 m?)
A bunch of other guys like Kris Newbury - various salaries (around $0.1 m?)

According to my Very Scientific Guessing, two-way contracts probably add up to about $2.5 million, give-or-take, against the summer cap. As for the season cap, we'll have to do a different kind of guessing, with respect to which of these guys makes the roster. Let's make the bold assumption that the four 2-way contracts I named will make it, and all achieve their performance bonuses, but no one else will. I know that's probably false, but it gives us at least a number to work with: $5.0125 million for those four dudes.

So, for all our currently-signed players, that brings us to a summer cap hit of something like $55,420,834, leaving us $15,309,166. As for the season cap, if we assume (Wolski,) Zucc, DZ, Step, and McD all make it (surely the latter two will), we've got a hit of $51,433,334, leaving us $12,866,666. Bear in mind that while the summer cap hit is pretty set in stone, we can do normal things to affect our season cap hit, like putting Del Zotto's or Zuccarello's cap hits back on the Whale.

And then there's the remaining free agents we need to sign. On the top of that list are our RFAs: Callahan, Dubinsky, and Boyle. We've extended qualifying offers to all four, which shake down as follows:

Ryan Callahan - $2.4 m
Brandon Dubinsky - $2 m
Brian Boyle - $605,000

That's $5.005 m we've promised in qualifying offers, but we can expect to offer all four of those players much healthier contracts than their qualifying offers demand - especially since they've all filed for arbitration. What that basically means is that, as the summer cap flies, we've got $60,425,834 tied up, leaving us $10,304,166 on raises to Callahan, Dubinsky, and Boyle, and anyone else we wanna grab.

My guess is that Callahan and Dubinsky's salaries will double, and Boyle's will do more than that, going up to like $2.5 m. If I'm right, that'd leave us $3,969,166 to work with over the summer, which is plenty of room for me to be wrong about my summer cap calculations, plenty of room for us to leave Del Zotto and Zuccarello on the roster for opening night if we want to, and probably some room left over to pursue another inexpensive free agent or two, if we feel the need.