Bruins Down to 24

The Boston Bruins made more roster moves on Saturday night, to help bring their roster down to 24 players, one more than the 23-man limit the NHL has. The Bruins waived six players, including Dany Sabourin and Andy Wozniewski, in order to send them down to the minors. They also managed to send down three others without passing them through waivers and also have three others on injury/non-roster spots.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Marc Savard	Zdeno Chara	Tim Thomas
David Krejci	Dennis Wideman	Tukka Rask
Mark Recchi	Matt Hunwick
Michael Ryder	Derek Morris
Blake Wheeler	Mark Stuart
Chuck Kobasew	Andrew Ference
Milan Lucic	Johnny Boychuk
Patrice Bergeron
Steve Begin
Marco Sturm
Shawn Thornton
Byron Bitz
Vladimir Sobotka
Zach Hamill
Brad Marchand

The Bruins are going to be a younger, faster team than what they were last season, despite being a pretty quick team last year. Tukka Rask will be the back-up to Tim Thomas (pictured) this season, which will give him the NHL experience that he so desperately wanted. That's a pretty major upgrade for the Bruins this year. You'll notice that they also have Zach Hamill and Brad Marchand, two Team Canada alums, joining their early season roster. Both players are a little smaller, but they have good hands and work really hard. It'll be interesting to see if both of them stick and beat out a guy like Sobotka for that final cut.

But wait a gosh-darn second! The 24 players that the Bruins have on their current roster have an annual cap hit of $60.5 million, a clear $3.7 million over the $56.8 million ceiling. What do they do? Well, that's a great question. If you cut one of the kids, they will be far short of helping out the team. If they waive someone, they'll have to hope that they get picked up by someone to take that cap space away. If trades were to occur, they're going to have to move a good player for next to nothing.

Even if they do make the move, they still have buyouts to consider, as they have three contracts still on their books, worth just over $2 million against the cap. It's no wonder they had to trade Kessel away for picks.

The Bruins are going to be a good fantasy team, but they have to sort out the cap problem before you can really give a concrete decision as to where they'll finish. Who goes, who stays? In a fantasy pool, you should make sure you're going after some of the sure things, as you don't know if there are some bubble players here that will have to step up and do the job. There are a number of Bruins that I would like to see on my team, but I won't be going too Bruins-crazy this year.