Slater Onto the IR

In order to wrap up their active roster before today's deadline, the Atlanta Thrashers have placed Box 24 forward Jim Slater on the injured reserve with a wrist injury.  I would imagine that the placement on the injured reserve will be retroactive to a certain date, which will likely give the Thrashers some flexibility if Slater is ready early, but until then, the Thrashers now have an active 23-man roster, which is posted below.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nikolai Antropov	Tobias Enstrom	Chris Mason
Rich Peverley	Dustin Byfuglien	Ondrej Pavelec
Niclas Bergfors	Ron Hainsey
Andrew Ladd	Zach Bogosian
Bryan Little	Freddie Meyer
Nigel Dawes	Johnny Oduya
Evander Kane	Brent Sopel
Jim Slater	Boris Valabik
Ben Eager
Chris Thorburn
Fredrik Modin
Eric Boulton
Alex Burmistrov
Patrice Cormier
Andrew Kozek
Anthony Stewart

The active 23-man roster has a projected annual cap hit of only $44.7 million, which is only shades over the salary cap floor of $43.4 million. The Thrashers are still a very low-budget team, but they have made great strides with such a small budget (relatively speaking).  This current cap hit does not include any new bonuses that Alex Burmistrov may have on his entry-level deal, nor does it include any of the cap hits associated with the players on the injured reserve.  Smaller change calculations are still going to be made between now and the end of the year, but I think we could consider the Thrashers safe.