Flames Snap Up Morrison

After having a pretty good training camp as an invite with the Vancouver Canucks, Brendan Morrison couldn't come to terms with his former team, with depth at the forward ranks and salary cap issues getting in the way. After being released from his tryout, it didn't take long for Morrison to find a new home, signing a 1-year deal with the Calgary Flames for $725,000.

The Flames are currently dealing with some health issues of their own, especially at the centre position, where Morrison will slot in right away.  With injuries to Matt Stajan, Daymond Langkow, Ales Kotalik and David Moss, the Flames have been reeling though the preseason, in need of someone to fill the void at a very low cost.

In 2010 with the Capitals, Morrison had a pretty decent year, scoring 12 goals and adding 30 assists in 74 games, ranking him 180th in pool scoring.  That's a very reasonable season as the team's 3rd-line centre and those numbers could possibly improve with a good start to the season with the Flames, likely landing on the team's 2nd line to start.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Jarome Iginla	Ian White	Miikka Kiprusoff
Rene Bourque	Marc Giordano	Henrik Karlsson
Matt Stajan	Jay Bouwmeester
Olli Jokinen	Robyn Regehr
Niklas Hagman	Steve Staios
Brendan Morrison	Adam Pardy
Daymond Langkow	Cory Sarich
Alex Tanguay	T.J. Brodie
Curtis Glencross
Ales Kotalik
David Moss
Craig Conroy
Tim Jackman
Raitis Ivanans
Mikael Backlund
Stefan Meyer
Ryan Stone
Brett Sutter

The Flames cap calculations are looking awfully dicey at the moment, especially with the indefinite nature of most of the injuries that they have on the books at the moment. All five forwards in red are listed as out indefinitely with various injuries with no real timetables of when they are set to return, so that could be any time between now and who knows when, so what do you really say?

As of right now, I am going to include four of the five injured forwards, assuming that Stone is still on the roster for the medical facilities of the Flames and will likely either be sent down to the minors so he doesn't count at all against the cap or will be placed on the Long Term Injured Reserve, which will also take him away from the cap and then will be sent down after his 10+ games of being on the list are over.  That being said, the Flames currently have 27 players on their roster, plus one buyout at a cap projection of $65.2 million.

If all four players that are left in red get placed on the Long Term Injured Reserve for the minimum 10 games or 24 days, the Flames could save $1.7 million in cap space right there, but that is nowhere near enough to get them underneath the ceiling.  This could be a sticky situation.

Much like Fedotenko earlier on in the day, Morrison has no direct implications to the pool at this time, but may have some indirect effect with the players he is lined up with and the possibility of giving the team enough depth in their time of need to help win an extra game or two to start the season.  Look for Morrison to be a waiver draft pick-up this season, especially if he can stick with the club and make a difference on the scoresheet.