One Down, One to Go... Monahan Re-Signs

The Calgary Flames' agenda for the Summer included having to re-sign a couple of their future pillars of the franchise, including centre Sean Monahan, who they were able to lock up on Friday morning, finalizing a 7-year deal, reportedly worth $6.375 million against the salary cap each year.

The Flames' 1st round pick in 2013 (6th overall) has stepped in immediately for this club and has provided hope through some gloomy seasons that the franchise is starting to come back around and there wasn't going to be a bridge deal out of his entry-level contract, since his importance was so great.

In the 2016 season, the 21-year old finished with 27 goals and 63 points in 81 games, ranking 44th overall in pool scoring, 27th among all forwards and forming an important duo with still unsigned RFA Johnny Gaudreau, this club really has something to build around.

The early projections are still fairly modest for Monahan, who has been improving season over season and the improvement for the coming year will bump him up into the 65-point range, which should still be good for a 2nd round pick in this year's draft, possibly higher, depending on how good you think the Flames will be in 2017.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Sean Monahan	6.375	Mark Giordano	6.750	Brian Elliott	2.500
Troy Brouwer	4.500	Dougie Hamilton	5.750	Chad Johnson	1.700
Michael Frolik	4.300	Dennis Wideman	5.250
Mikael Backlund	3.575	TJ Brodie	4.650
Sam Bennett	0.925
Matt Stajan	3.125	Ladislav Smid	3.500
Lance Bouma	2.200	Deryk Engelland	2.917
Brandon Bollig	1.250	Jyrki Jokipakka	0.900
Alex Chiasson	0.800
Linden Vey	0.700
Daniel Pribyl	0.925	Oliver Kylington	0.762
Hunter Shinkaruk	0.902
Emile Poirier	0.894
Mark Jankowski	0.925	Kenney Morrison	0.925	Jon Gillies	0.925
Matthew Tkachuk	0.925	Rasmus Andersson	0.787	Mason McDonald	0.823
Morgan Klimchuk	0.894	Keegan Kanzig	0.773	Nick Schneider	0.617
Micheal Ferland	0.825	Brett Kulak	0.657	David Rittich	0.925
Brett Pollock	0.712	Ryan Culkin	0.657
Andrew Mangiapane	0.705	Tyler Wotherspoon	0.625
Hunter Smith	0.693
Garnet Hathaway	0.690
Austin Carroll	0.670
Jamie Devane	PTO

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system

Now, we wait for the Gaudreau signing, which still hangs in a little bit of limbo, as speculation suggests that he will be looking for the $7 million range, something the Flames would be hard-pressed to afford this season.

The 23-man roster above, everyone in colour, is leaving $6.8 million in cap space for the coming year and you would have to remove one of those forward numbers when Gaudreau signs, which will give the team somewhere north of $7 million, so it will be tight.  The Flames won't go into the season without him, but their negotiation skills will be put to the test to see how much flexibility they will get in this regular season.