Well, it was finally made official today. Dion Phaneuf will be a Calgary Flame for another 6 years. While the Flames stupidly persist in "not disclosing financial details", TSN claims the deal is indeed for the rumored 6.5M/season.
Good news? Mostly. The Dion isn't quite a 6.5M player just yet, but his pedigree and contributions through his first 3 seasons suggest he eventually will be (and more). As a 20 year old, Phaneuf stepped into the NHL from Junior and equalled an NHL record for goals by a rookie defensemen. Since then, he's led the Flames in hits, ice-time and points from the blueline each year. He still has things to learn in his own end, particularly against tougher competition and on the PK - but it's a fair bet that those things will come eventually. In my estimation, Phaneuf looks like a generational talent and should end up justifying his contract. Perhaps sooner rather than later as well.
The bad news is the Flames cap room for next year just keeps on shrinking. Regehr, Kipper and now Phaneuf all get drastically more expensive next year, meaning Sutter will likely have to find some genuine bargains on the market in the summer in order to keep this team at even-keel, let alone improving it by any measure. Calgary now has about 44.8M committed for next season, with the likes of Langkow, Huselius, Hale, Yelle, Nolan and Conroy all scheduled to become UFA in July. That's about 6-8M in cap-space in which Sutter needs to fit 4 top 6 forwards and 2 support players. Mark Smith and Eric Godard will also be looking for contracts in the off-season, but their contributions are ignorable.
As I've argued here previously, Sutter could probably free up some space by cutting the fat (Warrener, Nilson, Primeau, Eriksson, Aucoin together equal 10.15M) although that would result in a couple more roster holes to plug (in the case of Eriksson and Aucoin at least). Still, that's more than a decade of cap-space, with only 2 bottom pairing defensemen needed to fill the gaps (and maybe a kid or two to sit in the press-box most nights). Let's say it costs 4M for the replacements...that's another 6.15M added on top of the hypothetical 6-8M in cap space. About 13M to sign Huselius, Langkow, Conroy, Nolan, Hale and Yelle (or their equivalents) is a much rosier picture. The challenge being, of course, actually cutting said fat. How does Sutter go about purging that many unwanted calories?
I guess it's possible that maybe Warrener or...um...Nilson might have some trade value, but I can't imagine anyone accepting the likes of Eriksson or Primeau , especially with those contracts (Primeau in particular). Do the Flames have the budget to bury 2.8M in the AHL? Then there's Aucoin, who has an active NTC in his contract. Adrian's been a decent player for Calgary this year, but not 4M good. I think the cap space is more valuable than the skater come June. The options for dumping his salary are extremely limited, however - it's unlikely he could be dealt (NTC...plus most teams won't want him at that price anyways) and buying him out would be a pretty inefficient strategy - it would still cost Calgary 2.66M to "carry" his buy-out under the cap (2/3 of cap hit), meaning:
buy-out + replacement player = no cap relief gained.
Argh. We may be stuck with ol' Adrian. If he stays, no replacement player needed, but for arguments sake let's say that keeping Aucoin reduces the hypothetical cap space after fat trimming down to roughly 9M for about 6 players. Assume 1.5M to re-sign or replace Hale and Yelle. That's 7.5M for Langkow, Huselius, Conroy and Nolan. It's a tight squeeze my friends, even with the assumed loss of Primeau, Warrener, Nilson and Eriksson, which is by no means assured. I think we can say a couple of things for certain:
1.) At least one of Langkow and Huselius is gone after this season. Quite possibly both.
2.) Sutter won't be acquiring any contract that extends beyond this year at the deadline.
3.) It would be nice to coax Giordano back into the fold in the off-season, assuming he's progressed some overseas.
4.) The Flames may have one hell of an ugly forward group come September '08.
5.) Conroy re-signing for a one year, reduced rate deal (1.5-1M) would be a good thing.
Matt's earlier musings on the subject here.
