Flames Struggle With Books As Well

The Flames couldn't have found themselves in a more difficult situation on Friday night in Minnesota. First, the Flames have not been very sharp all season in the second half back-to-back nights. Second, they suffered injuries to their back line. Third, those injuries are to expensive players, which puts the cap strapped team in a mathematical nightmare.

Robyn Regehr left Thursday night's game with a lower body injury and was not able to go on Friday with the same injury. Also, Dale B., lost another defenseman to injury, as Adrian Aucoin was not in the line-up due to a reported upper body injury. You would think that would be enough to throw the Flames into a frenzy, but with $8 million in annual salary cap figures lost to injury for the night, which still counts on it's daily rate, to fill those gaps would ruin their cap figures for the remainder of the season, with the roster that they are looking to carry for the remaining four games.

The 21 players that were on last night's roster sheet for the Flames, all counting against the cap, has an overall annual figure of $57.1 million, which would be over the cap for all 82 games. With the math that the Flames have worked out, they had opened up enough space to get Jokinen and have a daily rate (annual rate divided by number of days through the regular season) that would make their final number as snug to the annual cap limit as possible.

Also helping to make room for the Flames, Dustin Boyd was sent down to the minors, so he wouldn't count against the cap for yesterday's action.

Click here to see an updated injury page.