Well, I FINALLY got a complete roster and the financials for the NYR. And the cap situation is not as simple as it looks.
After deleting all of the players salaries that I expect to head to Hartford and other countries on loan, I was left with a roster full of 22 players (the full amount that is needed for a team). At the end of the Excel spreadsheet, the grand total came to….
over $61 MILLION.
The cap is $56.7 Million. The NYR need to cut about $5M from their roster. They would literally have to cut 5 players, or one overpaid player (like that’s happening) to just save themselves from being fined for going over the salary cap. This is without signing Shanahan.
Shanahan is allegedly working on a new CBA with some other old-timers (like Chelios and Selanne) to try and allow over 35 year old players the ability to apply their salaries to future years for teams whose cap situations are overflowing, instead of applying their salary to the current year’s salary cap. There is no actual proof, yet, that’s what Shanny and the boys are working on, but we’ll see.
If Shanny does the math…there’s no way that Sather can really work on this roster and fit him in. He’s got $5M of fat to trim already. The easy scenario of cutting Rissmiller and Voros…it’s still not enough fat. More needs to be trimmed. Replacing them and about 3 other players with lower priced alternatives…that is dependent on the fact that there’s room to actually replace all 5 of those guys with a cheaper alternative.
Still NO ROOM!
We also have to add in the $750,000 owed to Jaromir Jagr for the Buyout Option; and the $750,000(?) that counts against the cap for Shanahan’s option from last season. That means the Rangers currently have almost $63M committed already and over $6M to get rid of.
So like I’ve told people before, the Rangers don’t even have $5 to spare Shanny…really, they don’t even have a penny to spare him.
Expect to see some trades and some high priced guys heading to the minors.
