Only thing I would change is that Lewington would probably be the next guy up. Alexeyev needs to play regularly.

You have no good car ideas

Agreed!

Does this scenario have Stephenson playing in the AHL?

You technically could have an opening day roster of 22, but having a 22 man roster for the entire season is NOT going to happen. Real cap space is needed.

The 22 man roster is a pipe-dream and people really need to get past it.

No room for 23rd man.

That's why a trade is needed to move out cap.

I put him there under the assumption that other teams are thinking like I am and don't see him as a viable NHL player in 2019-20 (or ever). In spite of basic and advanced metrics alike showing clearly that he had no business playing NHL minutes, he got a lot of run in Washington while never substantially improving. Add the depth free agents signed by GMBM and there suddenly isn't a place for him anymore with the big club, so I think he'd be best off as a "veteran" leader in Hershey (Stanley Cup ring in the room blah blah blah).

The Caps have been rolling with a 22 man roster for years. No need to stash another body in the press box. We call up someone for the 23rd spot if injuries strike and we need someone else. It's no "pipe-dream", it's how we've been operating for the most part since Trotz took over

As you said, 22 men is how they've run the team for the last 5 years or so, but even if they needed to reach 23 men on the roster, they could do so by only carrying 22 men for the first few weeks and 23 from there on out. They can get up to about 644K in space if they swap Copley for Vanecek and use Lewington as 7D instead of Alexeyev. The space they'd accrue being even just that far from the ceiling would allow them to bank enough space to call up a 700K player (i.e. Gersich) for all but the first 15 days of the 186 day long season, or a combo of higher salaried players for fewer total days. They'd be tight to the cap with 23 but it's possible, even though 22 is not even a big deal literally at all.

No, they haven't. You have said that a lot and you really need to stop lying to yourself about that. Their lowest was an average of 22.9 on the cap across the year and that was due to excessive luck with non-LTIR injuries. It is a pipe dream. 22.9 on the cap = 23 man roster.

Lol whatever you say buddy. We follow the team pretty extensively, we know what we're talking about. Injuries strike and that leads to a 23rd guy getting called up, but have hardly ever carried a 23 man roster when fully healthy.

I want to say that 30 professional NHL GMs could not possibly be dumb enough to let Chander MF'ing Stephenson pass through waivers, but they all passed on DSP, so I'm through defending them. Buncha jerks if you ask me. Do what you like, and they'll never notice. Too busy hyping up their Chmelevskies and Merzlikenzes, this time of year, to care.





https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1CAHHRN_enUS859US859&biw=1366&bih=665&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=pQ9SXd7qIoy3tAbZroTwDQ&q=nhl+injuries+per+team+man+games&oq=nhl+injuries+per+team+man+games&gs_l=img.3...1703.2979..3166...0.0..1.216.931.9j0j1......0....1..gws-wiz-img.RsBl4Dg9zMA&ved=0ahUKEwie0YC61v7jAhWMG80KHVkXAd4Q4dUDCAY&uact=5#imgrc=9sVlVDBous8YNM:


(I'm not paying registration to see a graph of the obvious, but here's a google search showing graphs of the fact that every NHL team gets injuries. If they aren't serious, and you have 22 guys, including one spare C and one spare D, you're fine. If they are serious, you get some cap space, and you're fine)

Healthy is not relevant, at all.

AT ALL

It is how many people count against the cap. You can't have 22 on the roster with $41K space. It doesn't work. It is not reality based. People get hurt (non-LTIR), others get called up, you now have 23, 24, 25 counting against the cap... when you have 22 against the cap and 41K space, you simply can't do that.

You are COMPLETELY ignoring that those injury call-ups count against the cap. You are completely ignoring that the non-LTIR guys sitting in the press box eating nachos count against the cap. Keeping healthy skaters to 22 is not relevant to the cap situation. It is how many guys count against the cap and players on IR count. Players that are just hurt for a few games count. Your position on this doesn't hold water because you are ignoring what actually matters.

No team purposely carries 22 guys, 2 on IR, 20 healthy, and heads into a game. If someone gets hurt in warm-ups they would go into the game down a skater. That's not how professional sports work. If you have 22 on the roster, 2 go on IR, you call up 2, you now have 24 counting against the cap. LTIR doesn't count, IR counts.

This literally isn't opinion. This is the way the system works. This isn't "Is Oshie worth a $5.75M cap hit?" This is "Oshie has a $5.75M cap hit."

In the cap year the Caps may have tried to carry only 22 healthy guys, but they finished the year with 22.9 counting against the cap. You can call it whatever makes you happy, but the bottom line is that it is NOT looking at 22 spots when trying to stay under the cap. Again, not opinion. This is how it works.