OK, here's my latest update of the salary cap situation:
We now have 17 players signed and committed, or tentatively committed, to the roster to start next season.
They are:
10 forwards -- Ovie/Kuzy/Backstrom/Oshie/Eller/Bura/Connolly/Vrana/Smith-Pelly/Stephenson
5 defensemen -- Carlson/Kempney/Niskanen/Orlov/Djoos
2 goalies -- Holtby/Copley
The total salary cap hit for those 17 players is, to the nearest thousand dollars, $69,552, 000. The salary cap for the coming season has been set at $79.5 million, leaving the Caps $9,948,000 to work with. The team will need to place at least 5 more players on the roster to start the season, maybe 6. I say 5 because Trotz was satisfied with 22; one extra d-man and one extra forward. Whether Reirden feels the same way I do not know.
Two RFA players that are as yet unsigned but are a virtual certainty to be on the roster this coming season are Wilson and Bowey. My thinking is that it is going to take upwards of a $5 million cap hit to sign both of them: say $3.7 million for Wilson and $1.3 million for Bowey. IF my thinking is reasonably accurate, that would leave 3 more players to be added to the roster (2 forwards and a defenseman) and $4,948,000 available (sorry for unaccountable font change.) If Beagle were resigned for a cap hit of, say, $2,000,000 (a small raise), the other two spots could be filled by Hershey call-ups for less than $2,000,000, leaving a little in excess of $1,000,00 of cap room available for injury call-ups, leveraging for a roster addition at the trade deadline, etc. That isn't much room. If Travis Boyd were resigned instead of Beagle for, say, $1,000,000 and the other two spots still filled with Hershey graduates, that would leave $2,000,000+ available, enough to have a 23rd player on the roster or have a much more comfortable salary cap buffer.
That is where I see the team as being for now.
NOTE: I get fuzzy and say "less than $2,000,000" for two Hershey call-ups because many but not all of the minor league contracts are for the league minimum of $650,000 if the player plays in the NHL. In fact, several of the most likely players to fill the NHL roster in the fall would count more than $650,000, though virtually all of them would have a cap hit under $1,000,000