Dorion Gets Creative

The point of this 21 player roster is to get the Senators temporarily up to as close to 83.5M as possible before placing Voracek and Little on LTIR. Ignore the actual line combos, I don't intend to decide who will play where.

1 - The Senators trade Brannstrom to Arizona. Ideally, the Senators could trade Brannstrom somewhere for a late pick and keep it simple, but I don't think there would be a market for that. The idea behind the trade is that the Senators take two insured LTIR contracts from the Coyotes, which makes Brannstrom a cash in/cash out acquisition. Soderstrom does come back to Ottawa, but he is not integral to the trade. It can be a different depth defender, or no defender at all with a mid-to-late draft pick instead, with the Senators raiding PTOs for a defenseman. The entire point of the trade is to get rid of Brannstrom's cap hit in exchange for LTIR contracts. Given how close the Senators will be to the cap ceiling, there are less consequences to going into LTIR since they will have so little cap space to bank going into the deadline anyways.

2 - Joseph will be sent to the minors. The Senators need the 1.125M in cap relief and he played his way off the team last year.

3 - Forsberg will start in the minors. He is very unlikely to be claimed because of his term, cap hit, and injury history. This will give Forsberg starting time in Belleville to get his game back on point after suffering a double-knee injury last year. It is also essential in order to free up cap space for Pinto. The difference between Sogaard and Forsberg is 200k. If Forsberg is claimed, that isn't the worst problem to have since Sogaard is ready to play 20-30 NHL games a year, but he almost certainly won't be claimed.

4 - I opted to send down Kelly (waiver eligible) and Soderstrom (waiver-exempt), and recall Jarventie (waiver-exempt). The purpose being that gets the Senators within a few hundred dollars of the cap ceiling so that when they place Voracek and Little on LTIR, they get the highest possible cap ceiling under LTIR. They can then send Jarventie back down and recall Soderstrom, or do whatever other tweaks they need to do.

5 - Depending on who makes the team in each depth spot, they may have to place different depth players on the opening night lineup to maximize LTIR.

but the sens are the Canadian coyotes and are also cheap

But the yotes want them to get to that cap floor so they wont trade then regardless of salary owed

Not anymore. King Andlauer is in the house.

Not a really interesting trade for the Coyotes and good luck running with a 21-man roster with $895K in cap space the whole season.