Mirtle's salary series has inspired me to look again at the Flames salary situation. I've decided to do that by splitting the roster roughly in half, according to "top half" players (top 6 forwards, top 4 defensemen, starter) and "bottom half" players (everyone else). Dollar figures included are cap hits rather than actual salary.
Top Half:
Iginla - 7M
Langkow - 4.5M
Cammalleri - 3.35M
Bertuzzi - 1.9M
Lombardi - 1.817
Bourque - 1.3M
Conroy - 1.05M
Phaneuf - 6.5M
Regehr - 4M
Sarich - 3.6M
Kipper - 5.83M
---------------
Total: 40.847M
Mean: 3.71
Potenially Good value: (perform at or above cap hit): Iginla, Cammalleri, Lombardi, Bertuzzi, Bourque, Conroy, Regehr, Phaneuf, Sarich
Potentially Bad value (likely to under-perform relative to cap hit): Phaneuf, Kiprusoff
I included guys that are established top 6 forwards or top 4 defensemen, as well as a couple of players that are likely to make better than average contributions or take a step forward into the upper class (Bourque). Conroy is here because, though I think he'll play in the bottom 6, I assume he's going to see a lot of time against tough competition and will be big on the PK. Fifteen or more minutes per night for him is not unrealistic. Plus he might get the "play with your buddy Jarome" card again.
Obviously a huge portion of the rosters dollars are going to invested here. This is where the difference makers and starting goalies reside. This is where money should be spent, on guys who are good bets to carry the mail. To Sutter's credit, there isn't a lot of bad money here. Even Kipper and Phaneuf could prove to be good value players, steps forward depending. Most of the big guns aren't bargains, but their results should just about sync-up with their cap-hit, at least.
Something interesting we can see here is a steep drop-off in the forwards: after Iggy, Langkow and Cammalleri (mean: 4.95M), the remaining 4 players salaries average just 1.51M. Keep in mind we're talking about the top half of the roster - most, if not all, of these players should be expected to do some kind of heavy lifting. The primary problem with this roster slice, therefore, is many of the skaters aren't proven difference makers (or else they'd be more expensive). While they will probably provide value for dollars, there's a good chance some of them won't be able to provide the type of results required of top half players.
Unless a organization has a bunch of kids ahead of the curve (CHI with Kane and Toews for example), I think an ideal salary structure for this portion of the line-up is a gradual decline (eg: 6M-5M-4.5M-3.5M-2.5M-2M) rather than the step off a cliff we see above. A big gap probably means you have guys playing where they shouldn't be and there's a lot of money invested elsewhere - perhaps unwisely.
Bottom Half:
Wayne Primeau - 1.4M
Curtis Glencross - 1.2M
Marcus Nilson - 1M
Dustin Boyd - 0.742M
Eric Nystrom - 0.688M
David Moss - 0.55M
Andre Roy - 0.55M
Brandon Prust - 0.50M
Adrian Aucoin - 4M
Rhett Warrener - 2.35M
Jim Vandermeer - 2.3M
Anders Eriksson - 1.5M
Mark Giordano - 0.8M*
*estimate
Curtis McElhinney - 0.55M
--------------------------
Total: 18.13M
Mean: 1.39M
Potentially Good value: Glencross, Moss, Boyd, Giordano
Potentially Bad value: Primeau, Aucoin, Warrener, Eriksson, Vandermeer, Nilson (due only to Keenan's irrational hatred of him)
Meh (low cost+low utility=irrelevent): Prust, Roy, Nystrom
Here's where you hide your kids, your checkers, your projects, your long bets and your useless enforcers. Aside from the fact there's simply too many players and future healthy scratch Wayne Primeau is making more than two of the top 6 forwards (Bourque, Conroy), the Flames bottom 6 forward structure looks alright. You have a couple of good bets to provide value or value+ results (Moss, Boyd, Glencross) and the standard replacement level guys (Prust, Roy, Nystrom). Deleting Primeau (1.4M) and Nilson (1M) may have helped land another top forward, if anything.
Course, the real bad investment is revealed in the bottom half of defense corps. The Flames not only have 5 potential third pairing (or worse) defenders, four of them make more than the average bottom-half salary of 1.39M (which is, of course, skewed by their inclusion). In Aucoin, Warrener and Vandermeer's cases, much more. I suppose I could have moved Vandermeer up into the "top half" of the roster, since he's the best bet to play there next year. However, I dont honestly know if he'll be top 4 by mid-season; he may very well be usurped by the likes of Giordano or one of the lingerers (Warrener, Eriksson). Based on his past results, I dont think of Vandermeer as a guy who can consistently fill a top 4 role, nor is he good bet, at 29 years old, to suddenly make that leap. So here he stays for now.
The Flames have 10.15M invested in the bottom-half of the blueline alone. This is where the gap in the top 6 forwards comes from (not to mention the lack of a genuine top 4 guy to play with Phaneuf): a ton of dough wrapped in players who could probably be replaced at half their respective price points. Hell, since there's 5 of them, one of the anchors could be cut outright without being replaced at all. If Warrener et al. weren't bottom half players, the heavy investment in the defense and subsequent gap in the top 6 forwards wouldn't be an issue, since the Flames would theoretically be getting big contributions from the back-end. They aren't top half guys though, so the contributions won't be as notable and it is an issue.
Of course, the best time to trim salary is at the onset of the off-season, so management has the maximum amount of time and options to re-invest the freed up dollars. Sutter failed to do that, meaning the only reasons to cut fat now is to get under the cap (necessary) or have cap space to play with at the trade deadline (useful if play-off bound). There's certainly no difference makers to be found in UFA pool currently: the bones have been picked clean. Accepting another clubs salary dump is sometimes a viable way to inject some talent (albeit a hazardous one), but one needs cap space to do that.
Which brings me to the point that cap space is a commodity itself. It can be dealt for players, prospects or draft picks (just ask San Jose). Therefore, even if Darryl figured this summer's UFA pool was too shallow to swim in, he should have sought to expunge as many of the bad value guys as possible; if only for the sake of having more cap space because it is, in itself, valuable. Certainly Moreso than bad salaries.
As it is, the Flames are likely to be the ones dealing assets for cap-space in a few weeks. As October approaches, the chances of a Aucoin/Warrener+high draft pick or decent prospect for nothing (low draft pick, bad prospect) type deal increase substantially.
