Keeping Hossa .. Kinda

To the dismay of some fans Marian Hossa will be offered a contract by the Detroit Red wings. It is speculated that he is willing to take a "hometown discount" to stay with the Wings, but the overall cap hit isn't clear. Signing Hossa means losing the likes of Jiri Hudler, Mikeal Sammuelson and even a defense man. Losing Hudler does mean Detroit will get compensated with draft picks, but losing a 20+ goal scorer is pretty huge. That means roster spots will have to be filled with minimum waged players. This is the lineup I came up with.

Hossa(4.5) - Datsyuk - Holmstrom
Franzen - Zetterberg - Cleary
Helm - Filipula - Leino(.775)
Kopecky(.575) - Draper - Malby
Downey(.475)

* Hopefully Hossa can sign a life time deal of 8-9 years with a overall cap hit 4.5 million dollars
* Leino has stated he wont be returning the AHL so it's NHL or bust. .775 is a modest salary for a "rookie".
* Kopecky is a Wings developed player and is good on the checking lines. He's big and uses his body well. In signing a 1-2 year deal at .575 he can only hope to improve and get a pay raise when Lidstroms salary comes off the books. Otherwise he's not worth it.
*Downey being the 13Th forward is a roster filler that can sign for minimum wage.

Lidstrom - Rafalski
Kronwall - Stuart
Ericsson - Lebda
Meech(.500)
Lilja(-1.2)

*This defense is solidified already and the season hasn't even started. What's that say? Lilja's status for next season is already up in the air so it's likely he will start the season on LT IR which means his cap hit will come off the books.
*Meech signing at .500 means another cheap roster filler

Osgood - Howard
Add in the existing contracts and were talking 58 million dollars. I believe the current cap is at 56.9 and could possibly rise. The word is the players union will use a clause in their contracts to inflate the cap as much as 5%. The NHL had a good turn out this season so to me there's no reason to think why the cap should go down. 56.9 + 5% would be roughly 59 million. This can only happen in a perfect world. In Kenny We Trust.