As many Sharks fans know, the Sharks are currently over the 2008-09 salary cap by about 226K.  There’s been much speculation about who might get traded or otherwise dumped.  As we written before in this space and mentioned in the podcast, Kyle McLaren is the most likely choice to go, for two reasons.  One is his $2.5M contract would easily bring the Sharks under the limit and provide a little bit of room to boot; the second being with the off-season acquisitions of three defensemen, Big Mac is probably going to be on third pairing detail.  Pollak blogged about it today, and it got me thinking- is there a way for the Sharks to keep McLaren?

Actually, there is.  First of all, according to NHLSCAP.com, “…from July 1 to the last day of training camp, teams may exceed the Upper Limit by no more than 10%.”  This means the Sharks don’t have to do any juggling or trading until after camp begins, allowing the team to evaluate some young players.  Currently, according to the Hockeybuzz Cap Central (powered by nhlscap.com), the Sharks have 21 guys on the roster.  Let’s say the Sharks then bring up a young guy, maybe Cavanaugh, maybe Zalewski or Joslin, for a cost of around $600K.  This means the Sharks are about $800K over.

To fully understand what I’m about to posit, know that the cap is actually calculated on a daily  basis- $56.7M divided by 186 days in the season (postseason doesn’t count) means the Sharks can spend $304,839 per day on salaries.  At $800K over the cap for the course of the entire season, this means they are over $4301 per day in salary.

Coupled with waiver wire rules, where certain young players don’t have to clear waivers (like Devin Setoguchi) the Sharks could send players down to Worchester in order to clear the room.  For instance, sending Seto down for a day would save the Sharks $6702, putting them under the cap.  The Sharks still have to actually pay the money to Seto, but they are within the cap rules.  Seto hasn’t played enough games where he has to clear waivers, so he could be a candidate for shuffling.  Any other young untested players would be in a similar situation.

Another candidate would be Marcel Goc.  He would have to clear waivers, and would be vulnerable to the Sharks losing him, but his salary would be about enough to put the Sharks under the cap.

The final option would be something we’ve seen the Sharks do before, have a player be ‘injured’ and then send him to Worchester for ‘conditioning’.  These conditioning assignments are also waiver-exempt.

Are any of these scenarios very good?  Not even close.  But if the Sharks are in trade talks with a team as the season starts, one or more of these tactics could enable San Jose to dance on the razor’s edge of salary cap compliance.  Hopefully for only a week or two, but if there is a sequence of injuries to say, oh, I don’t know, McLaren, Lukowich, Grier, and Shelley, the Sharks could theoretically skate (har) the entire season.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.