Coyotes Down to 25 Now

Of course, wouldn't you know. You provide an update on a team and then they go ahead and update their roster only hours after you wrote about them. Figures as much.

The Coyotes decided to send down five more players to San Antonio to bring their roster down to 25 players, two more than the 23-man limit. Al Montoya, Shaun Heshka, Jeff Hoggan, Joel Perrault and David Spina all didn't make the cut on Thursday and they'll be starting the season in the AHL.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Shane Doan	Ed Jovanovski	Ilya Bryzgalov
Matthew Lombardi	Adrian Aucoin	Jason LaBarbera
Peter Mueller	Keith Yandle
Scottie Upshall	Zbynek Michalek
Martin Hanzal	Kurt Sauer
Mikael Boedker	Jim Vandermeer
Taylor Pyatt	Sami Lepisto
Petr Prucha	David Schlemko
Vern Fiddler	Matt Jones
Lauri Korpikoski
Kevin Porter
Daniel Winnik
Radim Vrbata
Brett MacLean

None of the cuts should come as a surprise. Those surprise cuts came much earlier in the week, when the Coyotes sent both Kyle Turris and Viktor Tihkonov down to the AHL. I'm not sure who saw that one coming. I would wonder if the new coaching staff wouldn't call both of them up to see what they can do for themselves. You have to know that they are both talented enough to play in the NHL and Dave Tippett should be able to find a system for them to thrive in. Still, for now they are in the minors and should not be considered right away.

Like I said in the post yesterday, the Coyotes have nothing to worry about when it comes to their cap situation. The 25 players I have listed above are running a cap hit of $43.4 million, just above the cap floor. If the Coyotes get any lower, the league will be using them to clean the floor, since they are already that low. Frankly, who's to say that they aren't doing it already, with these court battles going the way that they are.