2007-2008 Sabres

[inkman]

Afinogenov, Connolly, Kotalik, Hecht, Pominville, Gaustad, Spacek, Lydamn, Tallinder, Kalinin, Campbell, and Miller are under contract for a total of $28.35 million.

 

Restriced Free Agents are Vanek, Roy, Peters, Novotny, and Paetsch. I think Vanek and Roy will both be locked up to multi-year deals for around $3 million each. Novotny and Paetsch will probably receive their 5%(?) raise per the CBA bringing the Sabres payroll to about $35.5 million. If Peters does come back it will be for .5 million, the most he can make. (but I won't include him yet)

 

Unrestricted Free Agents include Mair, Numminen, Drury and Briere. I think Numminen retires, just a hunch. I think Mair re-signs for $.75 million. I think we somehow resign Drury and Briere for a combined $11 million bringing our cap figure near $47.25 million.

 

I doubt the cap will raise 10% like last year. Perhaps 5%, bringing the cap up to $46 million. In order to seek cap relief, I think something will be done with Connolly or Kotalik. Losing either one of those players will free up the needed space and the player used to fill the void will be probably be Paille who makes around $.75 million. Paetsch fills in for Numinenen and we still have approximately the same team.

 

I'm sure not all my info is correct and I probably left out someone important. Please let me know if that is the case.

[Taro T]

Afinogenov, Connolly, Kotalik, Hecht, Pominville, Gaustad, Spacek, Lydamn, Tallinder, Kalinin, Campbell, and Miller are under contract for a total of $28.35 million.

 

Restriced Free Agents are Vanek, Roy, Peters, Novotny, and Paetsch. I think Vanek and Roy will both be locked up to multi-year deals for around $3 million each. Novotny and Paetsch will probably receive their 5%(?) raise per the CBA bringing the Sabres payroll to about $35.5 million. If Peters does come back it will be for .5 million, the most he can make. (but I won't include him yet)

 

Unrestricted Free Agents include Mair, Numminen, Drury and Briere. I think Numminen retires, just a hunch. I think Mair re-signs for $.75 million. I think we somehow resign Drury and Briere for a combined $11 million bringing our cap figure near $47.25 million.

 

I doubt the cap will raise 10% like last year. Perhaps 5%, bringing the cap up to $46 million. In order to seek cap relief, I think something will be done with Connolly or Kotalik. Losing either one of those players will free up the needed space and the player used to fill the void will be probably be Paille who makes around $.75 million. Paetsch fills in for Numinenen and we still have approximately the same team.

 

I'm sure not all my info is correct and I probably left out someone important. Please let me know if that is the case.

EDIT: Since I'm a retard and put the wrong years it would be nice if someone gave me a little help changing that.

If the cap goes up 5% next year, it would be a bit over $46MM, if the player's share of the pie goes up to 55% (which a leaguewide 5% increase in revenues might trigger, it's late and I don't want to look at it closely enough to figure out if that would trigger it) the cap would be ~$47MM. My quick calc of the Sabres salary cap figure would be $47.7MM with Teppo replaced by a ~$500k player, Marty replaced by a $1MM player, the captains splitting $11MM, and no other roster changes other than manadatory raises and your estimates of $3MM each for Vanek and Roy. Roy will probably get something close to that, but Vanek is farther from UFA status, so he will probably come cheaper (this year, I hope).

 

If Drury keeps up his scoring pace (I doubt he will end up with 80 goals when the year is out, but 90-100 points definitely is not out of the question if he stays healthy), it will be nearly impossible to get him and Briere signed for $11MM between them. I don't see Briere getting a raise over $5MM (if anything, he may go down slightly to ~$4.5MM either in Buffalo or elsewhere), but if Drury hits the open market, he'll probably get a deal that averages $7MM+. Hopefully the Sabres can give him a LT deal, say 4 years at $5-6MM, but right now they don't hold many cards in the negotiations.

 

If those 2 can't get signed to a combined $11MM or less, the Sabres will have to lose at least 1 of their forwards and most likely 2 of them along with Teppo and Marty. (Teppo and Marty are luxuries the Sabres can't afford next year at their current salaries. Especially when one considers that Marty wants to be a #1 and is a UFA.)

 

This is the year for the Sabres to make it happen. They have young talent in Ra-cha-cha, but there is a significant likelihood that they will have to lose a more significant piece of the puzzle than they lost this year. Hopefully, the fact that the Sabres are, for the most part, entering the prime of their careers will enable them to offset the inevitable losses associated with having one of the best, if not the best, team in a salary capped league.

 

My gut feel is that the Sabres find a way to sign Drury but Briere will go elsewhere (I truly hope I'm wrong about this because they are the leaders of this team and I'd like to see them both back) which will limit the rest of the salary cap carnage.

 

I guess this is my longwinded way of saying you are correct that the Sabres will most likely be forced to make 1 or 2 more changes than they want to in this off-season.

[MBD]

The Sabres lost guys this past off-season. It will be a matter of the AHL'ers having to come-up and take their place.

[inkman]

It does look like they will be minus Biron, Numminen, and possibly Briere and Connolly. Filling in those spots with Paetsch, Paille and Stafford while signing a vet backup goaltender(me thinks Darcy will want Dennis to get a full year or two as the #1 in the Roc).

[matter2003]

Actually there are rumblings around the league that as attendence figures have started to fall, the cap actually has a better chance of going DOWN next year than it does of going up...

[Screamin'Weasel]

I cannot help think that making offers to cap-close team's RFAs could play significantly this off-season. I see the possibility of some of our good young talent being stripped away this off season by GMs of teams with decent cap room offering more than the Sabres can match when they are close to the cap. They won't offer huge, but guys like Roy and Vanek could get decent offers that, being up against it, the Sabres just will not be able to match.

 

This is what scares me most about the upcoming off-season.

[gregkash]

the best thing that darcy could do right now is start locking up players when January 1st hits.

[MBD]

The cap is a per-team basis, i.e. each team has a different cap number, right? If so, what changes it? If not, forget this post.

[inkman]

I cannot help think that making offers to cap-close team's RFAs...

 

I'd be shocked if teams did make offers to our RFA's. Between compensation, the amount of ill-will created and the lack of sure fire superstar; I can't imagine it happening.

[BetweenThePipes00]

The cap is a per-team basis, i.e. each team has a different cap number, right? If so, what changes it? If not, forget this post.

 

The salary cap is the same for each team. What changes it is league-wide revenue. The Players must get a certain percentage ... 54% or something ... dave_b can give you more details, but the simplest way to say it is that if the leaguue makes less money, the players make less because the cap goes down.

[MBD]

The salary cap is the same for each team. What changes it is league-wide revenue. The Players must get a certain percentage ... 54% or something ... dave_b can give you more details, but the simplest way to say it is that if the leaguue makes less money, the players make less because the cap goes down.

Oh, I thought the salary cap was different for each team depending on each team's revenues, i.e. shared revenue plus local revenue. I'm glad it's the same for every team. Thanks.

[nfreeman]

I believe that if the cap goes down, each player makes less money too, since something like 10-15% of each player's salary is escrowed and held until the end of the season when league-wide revenues are totalled up. So, if the cap goes down, each player makes less, and teams therefore don't have to start cutting players to get under the new, lower cap. However, (i) I could be wrong about some or all of that and (ii) it's awfully early in the year to start predicting total revenues for the year.

 

I think Weasel's concern about Vanek and Roy is very well placed. Those 2 are emerging stars, everyone wants a piece of the Sabres right now (note how Janek, Rory and Thorburn were all snapped up), and the league rules permit other teams to sign them. Wouldn't you trade a couple of high draft picks for Vanek if you were another team's GM?

[Taro T]

The salary cap is the same for each team. What changes it is league-wide revenue. The Players must get a certain percentage ... 54% or something ... dave_b can give you more details, but the simplest way to say it is that if the leaguue makes less money, the players make less because the cap goes down.

(BtP, this post is actually for MBD, but this looked like a good spot to reply.)

 

There are 2 factors working here, actual $'s spent and salary cap $'s. Salary cap $'s are based on a player's AVERAGE salary over the length of his contract. So a player getting $2MM this year, $3MM the next, and $4MM in year 3 would count as $3MM against the cap in each of the 3 years.

 

The nickel explanation is: each team has a salary cap of $44MM to spend over the entire season on players. You can't ever be on pace to exceed that number (unless you have a player on bonafide long term injured reserve, a subject for a different day), so although you can't spend $24MM in the 1st half of the season and only spend $20MM in the 2nd half, if you only spent $20MM over the 1st half of the season, you could spend $24MM over the 2nd half.

 

Teams lose salary cap space when they buy out contracts. Most buyouts are for 2/3's the contract's remaining $'s and are counted 1/2 against the cap over twice the contract's remaining years. I.e., if a team bought out a player making $3MM for the next 2 years. They would pay him $4MM (2/3's of $6MM) and they would have their cap reduced by $1MM over the next 4 years (2 x 2 years).

 

The 54% that BtP referred to is for actual $'s. In '06-'07 the players will receive 54% of the league's total revenues (the revenues to be included are defined in the CBA). They will not receive 52%, they will not receive 58%, they will not receive 54.1%. They will receive 54.0%. That 54% includes ALL player salaries and bonuses including players on BLTI-IR.

 

The league places a portion of the player salaries in an escrow account. Depending on how league revenues fall, the players might have to forfeit some of the escrow, all of it, have ADDITIONAL givebacks if their aggregate salaries causes what they've taken home over the year to be greater than 54% of league revenues, or the owners might have to pony up more (like they did last year) after the season is over if the players received less than 54%.

 

Since the 54% is ~$8MM lower than the league salary cap and because average team salary is ~$41.x rather than ~$36MM, do not be surprised if the players lose most or all of their escrow. So when Alex Mogilny got to be placed on BLTI-IR to allow the Devils to effectively raise their own salary cap to ~$47MM, it realistically is costing the players on every team ~$100,000 (or ~$5k per player).

 

The escrow giveback could have the effect of reducing the Sabres ~$40MM payroll down to ~$36MM.

[Taro T]

I believe that if the cap goes down, each player makes less money too, since something like 10-15% of each player's salary is escrowed and held until the end of the season when league-wide revenues are totalled up. So, if the cap goes down, each player makes less, and teams therefore don't have to start cutting players to get under the new, lower cap. However, (i) I could be wrong about some or all of that and (ii) it's awfully early in the year to start predicting total revenues for the year.

 

I think Weasel's concern about Vanek and Roy is very well placed. Those 2 are emerging stars, everyone wants a piece of the Sabres right now (note how Janek, Rory and Thorburn were all snapped up), and the league rules permit other teams to sign them. Wouldn't you trade a couple of high draft picks for Vanek if you were another team's GM?

You appear to be confusing 2 separate things - actual payments to players in '06-'07 and the salary cap for '07-'08.

 

The cap for '07-'08 will be determined at the end of '06-'07. Existing player salaries for next season won't be effected by the cap going down (with the possible exception of any players scheduled to be making more than 20% of the new cap; their salaries will go down slightly as no one player can exceed 20% of the team cap).

 

The teams would still have to live with the new cap, so IF the salary cap went down to say $40MM next year (won't happen, but throwing this out as a hypothetical), then teams like the Sabres would be hosed because they have a lot of players under contract already. They definitely would not be able to afford Briere and Drury in that case.

 

What players actually take home in a given year is not exactly what their contracts say it will be. If aggregate players salaries are less than 54% of league revenues, they all get extra money (divvied up proportional to their salaries - a $4.5MM player would get 10x the extra money than what a $450k player would get). If the on paper aggregate actual salary is more than 54%, the players lose money from their escrow. If players giving back the escrow isn't enough to get their cut of the pie down to 54%, they would have to actually give money out of their pockets back to the owners.

[shrader]

The escrow giveback could have the effect of reducing the Sabres ~$40MM payroll down to ~$36MM.

 

Minor issue, but the actual payroll is already around 36 million.

 

Anyway, I still don't see how a smaller cap would would lessen the cap hits for each player in the future. Would they take the smaller salary earned due to the escrow and then use that to calculate a new average salary?

[Taro T]

Minor issue, but the actual payroll is already around 36 million.

 

Anyway, I still don't see how a smaller cap would would lessen the cap hits for each player in the future. Would they take the smaller salary earned due to the escrow and then use that to calculate a new average salary?

I'd say $39.68MM is closer to $40MM than $36MM. :doh:

 

The smaller cap doesn't lessen the cap hits at all. A player who has a $3MM cap hit with this year's $44MM cap will have the same cap hit if the cap is $42MM or $46MM.

 

The escrow is strictly used for ACTUAL current year salary. The salary cap is for AVERAGE salary over the course of the contract.

 

The 2 use completely separate accounting.

 

When I said the giveback could reduce the Sabres payroll, I was strictly referring to the actual '06-'07 payroll.

[MBD]

(BtP, this post is actually for MBD, but this looked like a good spot to reply.)

Thanks. :thumbsup:

[shrader]

I'd say $39.68MM is closer to $40MM than $36MM. :doh:

 

That cap site we always reference dropped Connolly out of the total payroll for some reason. That explains that.

 

The smaller cap doesn't lessen the cap hits at all. A player who has a $3MM cap hit with this year's $44MM cap will have the same cap hit if the cap is $42MM or $46MM.

 

The escrow is strictly used for ACTUAL current year salary. The salary cap is for AVERAGE salary over the course of the contract.

 

The 2 use completely separate accounting.

 

When I said the giveback could reduce the Sabres payroll, I was strictly referring to the actual '06-'07 payroll.

 

In other words, if the cap goes down, teams near the limit are in trouble and get no relief. It's exactly what I though, and it goes against what some people were suggesting earlier in this thread.

 

The reason I mentioned the whole escrow thing is because if a player loses money at the end of the year due to the reasons mentioned earlier, I would think of that as a lower salary for that year. If you lower the salary for one year, the average goes down as well. I'm assuming the CBA does not account for that in the cap figures?

[inkman]

:wallbash: My head hurts.

[Taro T]

That cap site we always reference dropped Connolly out of the total payroll for some reason. That explains that.

In other words, if the cap goes down, teams near the limit are in trouble and get no relief. It's exactly what I though, and it goes against what some people were suggesting earlier in this thread.

 

The reason I mentioned the whole escrow thing is because if a player loses money at the end of the year due to the reasons mentioned earlier, I would think of that as a lower salary for that year. If you lower the salary for one year, the average goes down as well. I'm assuming the CBA does not account for that in the cap figures?

You are correct about that. The salary cap deals strictly with what the average $'s on paper in the contract are. It would make things an accounting nightmare if a player's cap hit varied with his post escrow adjustment take home pay was.

[shrader]

You are correct about that. The salary cap deals strictly with what the average $'s on paper in the contract are. It would make things an accounting nightmare if a player's cap hit varied with his post escrow adjustment take home pay was.

 

The whole thing's already an accounting nightmare, but that's a story for another day. :D

[nfreeman]

You appear to be confusing 2 separate things - actual payments to players in '06-'07 and the salary cap for '07-'08.

 

The cap for '07-'08 will be determined at the end of '06-'07. Existing player salaries for next season won't be effected by the cap going down (with the possible exception of any players scheduled to be making more than 20% of the new cap; their salaries will go down slightly as no one player can exceed 20% of the team cap).

 

The teams would still have to live with the new cap, so IF the salary cap went down to say $40MM next year (won't happen, but throwing this out as a hypothetical), then teams like the Sabres would be hosed because they have a lot of players under contract already. They definitely would not be able to afford Briere and Drury in that case.

 

What players actually take home in a given year is not exactly what their contracts say it will be. If aggregate players salaries are less than 54% of league revenues, they all get extra money (divvied up proportional to their salaries - a $4.5MM player would get 10x the extra money than what a $450k player would get). If the on paper aggregate actual salary is more than 54%, the players lose money from their escrow. If players giving back the escrow isn't enough to get their cut of the pie down to 54%, they would have to actually give money out of their pockets back to the owners.

 

Have I said lately that you are the man?

[inkman]

Carrying over from the other thread, I can see the lineup looking something like this:

 

Vanek-Connolly-Pominville

MacArthur-Roy-Afinogenov

Hecht-Novotny-Kotalik

Mair-Gaustad-Stafford

 

Lydman-Tallinder

Campbell-Spacek

Paetsch-Kalinin/Numminen

 

Miller/Dennis

 

 

If Timmy comes back to full health and ability this lineup won't be so bad.

[Samson's Flow]

Carrying over from the other thread, I can see the lineup looking something like this:

 

Vanek-Connolly-Pominville

MacArthur-Roy-Afinogenov

Hecht-Novotny-Kotalik

Mair-Gaustad-Stafford

 

Lydman-Tallinder

Campbell-Spacek

Paetsch-Kalinin/Numminen

 

Miller/Dennis

If Timmy comes back to full health and ability this lineup won't be so bad.

 

youre saying were not going to keep either drury or briere??? were leaving our top centermen to timmy connolly? and where is paille in this equation? those are my concerns

 

if im not mistaken numminen will be gone after this year, and just like last year, forwards will be sacrificed to maintain next years roster (i.e. dumont, grier, pyatt). I would think we would follow this and get rid of some underacheiving highly paid forwards such as hecht and kotalik, as well as the obvious cuts like peters. this should be enough to keep briere i would think, especially with the cap raising to ~47mil.

 

according to these thoughts, i see it something like this

 

vanek-briere-Pomminstein

roy-connolly-afinogenov

paille-novotny-stafford - if we keep either hecht or kotalik they would fill this third

mair-gaustad-macarthur line and cause changes accordingly for the other.

 

lydman-tallinder

campbell-spacek

paetsch-kalinin

 

i love all this meaningless speculation about next year. just win this year and then we can worrk about our accounting nightmare. ;)

[inkman]

i love all this meaningless speculation about next year. just win this year and then we can worrk about our accounting nightmare. ;)

We'll I got about 36 hours to kill at work on the weekends, so cut me a little slack when it come to meaningless speculation. To me it means I can kill some more time before I go home.

 

youre saying were not going to keep either drury or briere???

 

Without moving someone it will be difficult to keep either. We may have to sacrifice depth if we do want to keep one of them.

 

were leaving our top centermen to timmy connolly?

 

While the thought of this doesn't sit well with me either, it could be a possibilty.

 

and where is paille in this equation?

:oops:

 

if im not mistaken numminen will be gone after this year

 

If he either retires or they don't wish to resign him then yes he'll be gone. Eother way a body will have to be there, perhaps a less expensive one.

 

and just like last year, forwards will be sacrificed to maintain next years roster (i.e. dumont, grier, pyatt). I would think we would follow this and get rid of some underacheiving highly paid forwards such as hecht and kotalik, as well as the obvious cuts like peters. this should be enough to keep briere i would think, especially with the cap raising to ~47mil.

 

I'm just leery after the raises that Roy and Vanek will command, that there will be enough room left.