First off, Congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks and their fans for capturing their third Stanley Cup in the last 6 seasons. In the Salary Cap era that is truly a dynasty, but with just 11 skaters signed for next year and about $6M or so in cap space things are going to get pretty tight in the Windy City.

Which kind of leads me into my thoughts for the day. The Hawks win starts the clock on a number of things, most notably for the buyout window which will begin on Thursday.

While many Senators fans are left hoping, wishing and expecting the Senators to buy out one or more players, the fact is that it simply doesn't make sense at this point in time to make such a move.

The thing is, the team has to weigh the short-term gain against the long term pain, and determine whether it is worth it or not to write a cheque to make a player go away.

Case in point, the most popular buyout candidate, Colin Greening.

If my math is correct (and I am not a capologist by any means), a buyout of Greening's contract would cost the Senators, in terms of cap space, just under $1M per season for the next 4 years.

Ideally, the Senators would find someone willing to take that contract (unlikely and been there, done that), or find a landing space in Europe where Greening would be willing to go to play out the final two years of his deal.

Barring that outcome, the other option is to bury him in Binghamton. The cap hit to the Senators after the $950K cap saving would be about $1.7M, over the 2 remaining years. They would still have to pay him his full salary, but they would recoup some cap space and still control the player should he play well and a deal arise in the future where they could get him off the books completely.

Other popular buyout candidates include David Legwand, Chris Phillips and Chris Neil. Loyalty to a couple of career Senators aside, those buyouts don't make sense either in the long term, because all will come off the books at the end of next season. Buying all 4 of them out would save around $6.5M in cap space this coming season, but would also add $3.5M to the 2016-17 season's number.

The big question becomes, how do the Senators get their 5 RFA's resigned and still stay within the Cap?

Well, given that the Salary Cap is expected to go to between $70M and $71M, the Senators will have around $11.2M in cap space. Add Greening's savings of $950K and you have about $12.2M in cap space. This doesn't take into account the fact that the Senators will not have 3 goalies on their roster, but all three are accounted for in the current cap hit.

Looking at some recent contracts I think the following numbers should get those players signed -

Stone - $4M/yr X3 yrs
Hoffman - $3M/yr X 3 yrs
Zibanejad - $2.5M/yr X 2 yrs
Pageau $1.5M/yr X 2 yrs
Chiasson - $1M/yr X 2 yrs

Now you can negotiate the yearly dollar figures to help the player get where they want to be for their qualifying offers at the end of the contracts, but those are reasonable cap hits for those players.

That is a total of $12M, with all but Hoffman still being restricted at the end of those deals. So they can be locked up for what the Senators have left to work with without needing to sacrifice future cap space to fill a need now.

Of course, this all gets thrown awry with the potential for trades, and obviously this means they have to carry Phillips, Legwand and Neil for another season taking up roster spots.

Dishing a goalie + for a top 6 forward would have to be a money in = money out scenario, or possibly the Senators shedding some salary in the process.

It is a fine line, but one that is manageable without using valuable future cap space for a little bit of short term gain. If they do, then the Sens will be facing the same issue all over again when it is time for Cody Ceci and Patrick Wiercioch's extensions after next season.


*****

On a final note, the Senators signed winger Tobias Lindberg, of the Memorial Cup Champion Oshawa Generals to his entry level contract this morning. Lindberg was drafted with the pick that Ottawa acquired in the Ben Bishop trade, the only thing that makes the trade palatable given the way Cory Conacher flamed out.

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