Quoting: dzmets
So I guess my math is fuzzy here. Cap will be 81.5 next year and Tampa is 76.2 right now. If they match Cirelli at 6.3 that brings them to 82.5 then 5 to Segachev puts them at 87.5. That would be with 17 men on the roster. I will go down the rabbit hole a little bit and say they have 6 players at the league minimum of 700,000 bringing their cap # to 91.7. How exactly will they easily shed 10 + million in cap? That would require trading 3 forwards at least 2 of which have full no move clauses or moving McDonaughs contract (who also has a full no move clause) and a forward all the while having every player coming back be at the league minimum.
Cirelli won't be taking an OS, he's made it very clear he's not interested investing Tampa and certainly not for Buffalo. Even if he did, Tampa moves out Killorn, Paquette and one of Gourde/Johnson to save ~11 million. Coburn is also likely either traded to save Tampa an additional 1.7, or bought out to save almost 1.1. Since you're just assuming Cirelli takes an OS to.a bottom feeder, I'll make the assumption that is far more likely to happen, that there's either a cbo or Tampa gets a player to waive. A far more realistic Tampa lineup comes in just under a flat cap with 22 players
Stamkos-Point-Kucherov
Johnson-Cirelli-Palat
Coleman-Stephens-Goodrow/Barre-Boulet
Maroon/Volkov-Verhaeghe-Goodrow/Joseph
Volkov/Joseph as the 13th
Hedman-Rutta
McD-Cernak
Serg-Foote
Masin/Schenn etc as depth #7
Vasi
McE
With Cirelli, Serg and Cernak taking their bridges in total between 11 and 11.5 and fairly inexpensive 1 or 2 year deals for Rutta,Stephens, Verhaeghe, etc, Tampa does make it work. There is a chance Maroon doesn't return and if Brisebois has to spend a little extra on a couple players maybe Cernak gets moved, leading to Serg back on the right and Tampa getting a cheap depth guy for 3LD. There will have to be some fine tuning by JBB and his team to make all the #'s work, but this roster template is very possible for next season and does come in just below or just above the 81.5 cap.