saneopinion

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Canada, AB • Canada •

Focus shifts to offseason.

The first game with Jokinen is in the books and was a success, that line will not be that great every night but it did look very solid! Having said that, and assuming the Flames will win the Stanley cup (7-1 odds in Vegas right now) then a quick look into the summer might be worth while.

The players that could leave are Cammalleri, Bertuzzi, Roy, Moss, Aucoin and Leopold. C Mac and Pardy are RFA's and should return. The amount of salary that has the potential to leave the Flames is roughly 10.5 million in UFA's alone. There is the obvious potential that the players mentioned might not all leave as well.

If I had to guess I would say that Moss will be resigned, Bertuzzi if he accepts less than 2 million and Leopold. Aucoin and Cammalleri will be too expensive to retain even if they took discounts to stay assuming the minimum Aucoin would sign for is 2 million and Cammy around 5....Minimum. I personally feel Cammalleri is a very strong scorer, knows it and will take off for a large amount of money, he has no real loyalty to Calgary for the one year he will play here and someone will pay large for him. I could see Pardy taking a normal spot in the top 6 and Pelech making his NHL debut next year in the 7 hole or Negrin depending on who has the stronger camp.

The draft right now looks bleak... The flames have very little for trade bait to get a second rounder but would the rights to Cammalleri be worth perhaps a 2nd round pick from a team like Toronto? You would have to imagine they would be interested at least. If Sutter packaged that pick with a decent prospect (like Aulie) could you swing it for a 1st? Probably not but one should never count Sutter out, the man likes his drafts!

There is persistent rumors that the Salary cap will decrease in the year following next prompting most G.M.'s to be very frugal in their contract spending. Will the Flames make any big free agent signings? I do not think so but one player who I would love to see here is Mike Komisarik, unfortunately giving Sarich 3.6 through the 2011-2012 season and Vandermeer 2.3 through 2010-2011 does not help out...basically 6 million in two guys that are average NHL players kind of hurts.

The Flames will not replace Cammalleri's scoring but that's not to say they can't add guys to help carry the load, Backlund has a very realistic chance of making it next year and while not a huge scorer he can sure set it up...he can score too though!

So even though the trade deadline was exciting as a fan and us winning the cup will be awesome the off season will be a re-tooling of sorts... unless Sutter does as he's done every year and completely impress everyone with his moves.

S>O>

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