On one of the first days of training camp Shane O'Brien was joking around with Darcy Hordichuk, asking the Canucks enforcer if he wanted to bunk together in Manitoba this season or get separate residences.
Little did O’Brien know at the time that he was asking a valid question.
Caught in the crunch of the numbers game, and that would be cap numbers not the number of players with the team, O'Brien and Hordichuk were waived on Saturday and have since cleared.
Why were they waived?
Well, the Canucks need to clear a bunch of money before the 23-man roster freeze, and waiving O'Brien and Hordichuk was a good place to start as dropping the two takes close to $2.4-million off the table.
For reasons Canucks cap guru Laurence Gillman is far more suited to answer, Vancouver is best off to start the season with injured players Alex Burrows and Sami Salo on the active roster.
Essentially spend to the max of the cap.
That way, when they put them on LTR after game one, the Canucks get maximum cap relief. So, needing Salo and Burrows to be on the active roster essentially forced the Canucks to make player decisions that have as much to do with the cap as with their play. Sure, Andrew Alberts has had a heck of a camp, and yes he deserves to be on the team—but the cold, hard facts are that if it was Alberts was making $1.6 million or O’Brien $1.05 mil, Alberts would have likely been the waiver victim.
It's the new math folks, and look for some more creative accounting over the next few days as the Canucks try to fit everything in and set themselves up best for the season.
