Where's our bailout??

I've been too focused on other things to rightly look at the Flames ridiculous cap situation recently. You know, the one that has caused the club to send a viable NHLer in Dustin Boyd down to the farm and play with less than a full compliment of players during a fight for the NW division down the stretch drive.

Thankfully, Tom Benjamin takes Sutter to task for his questionable cap management. The best bit:

I thought Sutter was wrong to trade for Jokinen even before this fiasco unfolded. I think it was more wrong today because I think making sure the team has enough money to ice a full team is a fundamental for any GM.

I'll add that some of us saw this coming in October in the wake of the Warrener/Boyd affair. In fact, I disliked the Flames cap position even before the year started.

Myself, I dont think carrying a large amount of cap space is a good idea. If you can reasonably spend a lot of money to build a team, you should. That said, part of managing the cap is establishing and maintaining at least a minimal buffer that will allow you to make big trades or suffer through a rash of injuries (or both) if need be. Sutter failed in this aspect this season and it's hurting the team down the stretch.

The Flames budgetary circumstances would be defensible if Calgary was getting value out of their bloated-cap roster, but, sadly, that's not the case: there are at least 4 highly suspect contracts on this club that are either entirely needless (Warrener, Roy), or grossly inflated (Vandermeer, Primeau).

Darryl needs to get this house in order his off-season. Things will be even tighter next year seeing as the Flames have 14 players signed for nearly $46M. A lot of his problems go away (Warrener, Aucoin) but that won't stop him from making new ones if nothings been learned from this year.

Cammalleri - to keep or not to keep...

On the heels of yet another hat trick, that is the question currently.

Firstly, let's get a snapshot of the player.

He'll turn 27 in June and has three times scored 20+ goals in the NHL and once broken the 80 point mark (although he's on pace to do so again). He's currently first on the Flames in terms of goals (25) and PPG (12) and second on the team in points with 47. He also has a slightly better ESP/60 rate than Iginla (2.47 vs. 2.33) and the best PPP/60 rate of any regular PP skater (6.58).

That's the good stuff.

On the other hand, Cammalleri is a career minus player who tends to give up chances at ES. Also, while his CORSI rate this year is a healthy 10.8/60, it's actually a very middling number on a strong Flames squad, especially for a guy that enjoys some dcent line mates.

Finally, and perhaps the biggest flashing yellow "caution" sign for me, is his Shooting percentage of 17%. His career average is actually 12.4 (including this season) while prior it was probably down around 11 or so. It's always tough to argue against results with a snipe about SH%, but it's something that always seems to snap back to the mean eventually (just ask Jordan Staal or Mike Ribeiro).

The difference between his current and career average SH% sounds rather nominal, but the difference in terms of goals is marked: assuming 11.5% as a "real" shooting average, his expected goal output over the 147 shots he's managed so far is about 17; 8 below his current 25. Keep in mind that players who shoot lights out one year tend to fall below their career average the next as well...

That said, the next issue that has to be considered is the Flames cap space. According to NHLnumbers, Calgary has about in cap dollars committed next year. That's with Adrian Aucoin and Rhett Warrener off the books. Dustin Boyd, Adam Pardy, David Moss and Curtis MceLhinney will require marginal raises, Andre Roy can walk and Todd Bertuzzi will either have to be re-signed or replaced.

First let's assume Boyd, Pardy, Moss and CuMac are all re-upped and their raises absorb about 4M additional dollars. That's 47M spoken for, with two top 6 forwards left to consider and perhaps someone to replace the departing Aucoin.

This is where things start getting dicey. According to most pundits, the cap won't be increasing next year. In fact, some people expect it too fall, with it perhaps bottoming out around 50M. If that's true, the Flames won't have much wiggle room at all and will probably be forced to move guys like Sarich or Primeau for better bargains.

On the other hand, the team will have some room to play with if the cap is relatively static. I think both Bertuzzi and Aucoin could be replaced internally by promoting guys beneath them (Moss, Sarich) and then signing cheaper replacement level players to take those spots.

Aside from that, however, the team will need to invest in another legitimate top 6 guy - whether it's Cammalleri or someone else entirely. Undoubtedly it's going to come down to how Sutter values Cammalleri versus what the market dictates: if we get into a Gomez/Briere-style feeding frenzy in the off-season, the team might be better off letting Cammalleri walk at the $6 or 7M price-range - even if they can afford to pay him those kinds of dollars.

Sixer for Number 3

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.