Music: {allcanada} Canucks: Opening-night roster still in flux due to injuries, salary cap

Monday, October 4, 2010

{allcanada} Canucks: Opening-night roster still in flux due to injuries, salary cap

Remember when a capologist was a guy with a cool collection of team hats hanging on his rumpus room wall?

Those days, like rumpus rooms (who can afford one at $450 a square foot?), are just a fond memory.

The Canucks still have to shave somewhere north of $2 million from their payroll to squeeze under the NHL's $59.4-million-US cap, and they have to do it by Wednesday at 3 p.m.

"We've said all along we'll be cap compliant by the day prior to the start of the NHL season and there are going to be some moves that occur between now and then," said Laurence Gilman, the Canucks' assistant GM and resident cap expert.

The cap, it's the kind of thing that gets Shane O'Brien (notes) placed on waivers because he makes $550,000 more than Andrew Alberts (notes) and had a slightly inferior preseason than Alberts.

Canucks management has maintained since Mike Gillis arrived that roster decisions are based on hockey, and the Canucks have certainly been willing to ship salaries to AHL Manitoba.

But it would be like denying that part of the reason the U.S. invaded Iraq was its vast oil reserves to say that contracts have no influence on who makes the final roster.

"We've got a good feeling," Alain Vigneault said on if he's settled on an opening-night roster. "Obviously there's some cap issues which I'm not going to get into, but I've got a pretty good idea."

There's been much speculation Sami Salo (notes) and Alex Burrows, both out long-term with injuries, will be put on the opening-day roster, to create more wiggle room down the road when it comes to manipulating the cap. But Gilman wouldn't tip his hand. "It's not really appropriate for me to comment on our opening roster," he said. "We have moves yet to make."

Yes, but how does it work, that long-term injury cap relief?

"Well, the cap gets calculated on a daily basis," Gilman explained. "There are 187 days in the NHL season and whether you're in a relief situation depends upon where you're at on a particular day."