[The Original FFIV]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Honestly, and as pathetic as it is, they needed the cap space to sign Brzygalov. They may have been able to do some housekeeping to get that tight fit but the team was hovering around 60M in 'hard' cap and an additional 9.1M in bonuses. The bonus cushion only applies for a maximum of 7.5%, or 4.8M, so that other roughly 4.3M of bonuses applies the same as regular cap like that other 60M, bringing them to near exactly the ceiling's 64.3M.

They could have waived Labarbera, and sent some other players down and might have been able to very tightly fit in Brzygalov depending on exactly what he was making. But this was a cap transaction, which I would have to assume was what MacTavish thought was the best way to be able to fit in Bryzgalov.

And when it came to trading Smid, or however else they thought about making cap space through trades, there's actually very little cap space out there today. Only a handful of teams could have taken on Smid's ~2.8M left on his contract today and those teams include Buffalo and Florida, who probably aren't looking to turn their seasons around with a Smid calibre player, and other teams with internal budgets like the Islanders, Senators and Coyotes. It might have only taken the Avalanche to say "thanks but no thanks" because they don't want to ruin their chemistry before Calgary was the only possible destination.

Feaster has talked a lot about using cap space to the team's advantage, the only way to look at this trade is him finally coming through with his promise.

Dude, share this with capgeek as their figures are very misleading. Thanks for spelling it out clearly.