Categories: PenguinPoop

Should the PENS Be Sellers, Soon?

Salary Cap, or not? the era of Glen Sather hasn?t changed the NY Rangers one bit. Scott Gomez, and Chris Drury, Wade Redden, Henrik Ludqvist, Markus Naslund, and Michal Rozival are taking down a whopping $42.8 million. That?s (6) players that collect almost 76%… leaving $13.9 million left for the remaining players.
That comes out to approximately $800k each for the 17 other roster players. It?s gets worse when you start to include player like Nikolai Zherdev in the equation because then the money left over for 16 players is around $669k each.

The reason for presenting that is that the Penguins (not considering our present situation) are managed a lot better than that. For example, Crosby, Malkin, Fluery, Gonchar, Whitney, Orpik, Staal, and Fluery is at?$27 million? or 47% of the CAP. Although this will rise next season to be $39.4 million? the difference can be seen between these players and the high priced losers some other teams carry.? ?Malkin, Crosby, Staal, Gonchar, Whitney, Orpik, and Fleury are the core players of this team. The supporting cast (based on this year?s Salary Cap) would average to be around $1 million each.

Fluery?s salary next season doesn?t break into the goalies TOP-10 from this season.? Gonchar?s salary isn?t in the TOP-10 defensemen from this season. Crosby is?the same as?Ovechkin and Malkin will be there next season? but even at that they are only $1 million above players like Gomez and Daniel Briere of Philadelphia – who also, like Sather haven’t yet?learned how to budget their payroll. Maybe it was?lessons learned from our three bankruptcies but the Penguins have put together a solid core of players worthy of the fan support even though this season could be down the drain because of massive turnover and Maid-Marian Hossa deciding to go with who he thought might be the NY Yankees of hockey.? We’ll all be rooting for him, eh!

With money available from Satan, Fedotenko, Sykora (yes, Sykora), Gill, and Boucher there is approximately $12.9 million in replacement salary available for new players.? Even for Sykora if he’s deemed the best available on the FA market.
Depending where the new Salary Cap line is drawn I don?t think we are in that bad of shape compared to teams with long term contracts and players no where close to the same potential.? I see Boston in a make or break year similar to what we went through last season and Philadelphia if and when Briere returns could be in CAP trouble this season.

It might be smart for the Pens to be early sellers depending on how the next few games go. Not only does trading a few players (even for draft picks) help build the prospect base but doing it now could reap the highest rewards.