Making sense of the roster moves

I don't know if it's possible to make sense of Tuesday's roster moves by the Stars. I am not going to overreact to Neal and Fistric going to Oklahoma City. It's not a reflection on them or their play, and I am in no way knocking what I am sure is a fine organization and fine fans in OKC. I am sure we'll get an explanation tomorrow or soon. I don't see it as a big deal at this point.

I do know one thing: this issue has been looming for some time. The Stars, based on what it appeared they were going to do, were going to be tight against the cap. They still are. By my calculation they are $165,000 under the cap right now with Neal and Fistric out of the picture. That also includes taking out Wathier, Pushkarev and Vishnevskiy. That's $165,000 of cap space with 14 forwards, including Conner and Brunnstrom, six defensemen, including Janik, the two goalies and Zubov on injured reserve. That's why the moves and that's why right now there is no room for Neal or Fistric. They don't have the space to replace Conner with Neal because that would push them over. You can't drop, say Conner, and add Fistric as a seventh defenseman because that would push them over. They could solve a lot of cap issues by assigning Brunnstrom to the minors and taking his $2.225 million cap hit off the books temporarily, but I get the sense that is not in the cards. So, as a result, we have some cap chaos.

To be honest, I've been wondering how they were going to get under the cap for a couple weeks now. I figured they were $124,000 over even if they sent down Neal and kept Brunnstrom and Crombeen along with seven defensemen. If they kept Neal and went with six defensemen (sending Fistric down) they would be about $157,000 over. But by keeping Conner and his $500,000 cap hit the Stars are able to squeak under the cap right now.

And that's where we are. Do they have something else up their sleeves? Time will tell. At least they've kept things interesting as opening night approaches. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.