With Marco Sturm and Marc Savard getting closer and closer to returning to the Bruins line-up, there seems to be plenty of confusion on the amount of salary the Bruins need to move out in order to be cap compliant.

If Sturm were to return before Savard, the Bruins would have some time to work things out, as Sturm would fit under the Long Term Injury Reserve Exemption. However, if Savard were to return first, as it's looking like he might, his higher salary won't fit under the LTIR exemption. So just how much salary would have to be trimmed?

The daily cap limit is $309,894. The Bruins are currently spending $336,258 daily. Because Savard and Sturm are on LTIR, they are allowed to go over the cap by the two players' combined daily salary of $40,361.

With Sturm's return imminent, the Bruins have some moves to make.

Once Savard returns, the Bruins lose his LTIR exemption and then will be allowed to exceed the cap only by Sturm’s daily cap hit of $18,817. That means the Bruins could spend a maximum of $328,711 per day, making them over the daily cap by $7547.00. When you multiply that by 186 (the number of days used to calculate the cap) it puts the Bruins over the cap at the end of the year by $1,403,742.00, which is what they have to clear to get Savard in under the cap.
The issue now is Trent Whitfield. Before today, there was no indication that the Bruins ever placed Whitfield on LTIR, and really, there was no need to do so as they didn’t need the credit. If the Bruins were to place Whitfield on LTIR retroactively, the amount of space they would have to clear would be reduced by about $300,000.00.

It has been confirmed this morning that Whitfield has in fact been placed on LTIR, leaving the Bruins to clear approximately $1.1 million dollars to be cap compliant once Savard returns. The name that most Bruins fans think of immediately is Daniel Paille. If Paille were to be placed on waivers, the Bruins would still have to clear $25,000.00 elsewhere.

After the jump, how the Bruins might solve this cap puzzle...

The sky is not falling in Dallas. I repeat, the Stars are still shining brightly enough in the North Texas sky. A blog entry in this week’s Hockey News and cited in Sports Business Daily reported that the NHL advanced $8 million to the Stars to help cover expenses, news which no doubt had message board posters and perhaps a few other reporters/bloggers speculating as to whether the dreaded “r-word” could soon follow. After all, low attendance in a southern/southwestern market (regardless of outside factors, such as the Texas Rangers’ drive towards a possible World Series appearance) almost always fuels that chatter. Never mind how deep the Stars have put down roots since moving from Minneapolis, between consistent playoff appearances highlighted by that infamous Stanley Cup title in 1999, to the hockey rinks and youth programs they’ve helped create.

What’s actually going on is that the Stars are in the process of being sold. Ironically enough, that’s also why their plight is less onerous than it appears. A quick look at outgoing owner Tom Hicks’ other former sports properties tells a very similar tale. The Rangers received loans from MLB last year. Hicks and his partners defaulted on loans for both the Rangers and the Stars. But it was not until this past August that the Rangers were finally sold to an ownership group led by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan; even then it took an infamous auction. Last week, as nearly every Boston sports fan now knows, Hicks and former Canadiens owner George Gillett lost control of legendary soccer team Liverpool FC to John Henry’s consortium as Royal Bank of Scotland called in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans used to not only buy the team, but which were leveraged against it too. Hicks claims he could seek millions in damages, alleging that RBS forced Liverpool to be sold for significantly less than market value when it could have delayed repayment of the loans to see if any other investors would step in.

In the end, the financial groups overseeing the Stars’ sale might have to find a medium between the $300 million Hicks set as his price for the team, and a number closer to what Tampa Bay sold for this past February. But it will happen, and the team may not have a lot of money to spend until things are cleared up, but they are ultimately going nowhere- except perhaps upwards in the standings thanks to a 4-1 start. Besides, if old hockey cities are to be new again in the NHL, does that mean the Stars would become the Wild’s cross-town rival?

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To nobody’s surprise, Rick Rypien has been provisionally suspended for grabbing a fan on Tuesday night. It’s not the first time in modern memory that something has happened between NHL personnel and fans. Capitals owner Ted Leonsis had a physical altercation with a fan back in 2004, costing him a week away from the team and $100,000. In 2009, Rangers coach John Tortorella was suspended for one playoff game after he tossed a water bottle at a Caps fan. And of course, back in 1979, Terry O’Reilly, Mike Milbury, and other Bruins entered the Madison Square Garden stands after a Rangers fan swung a program at Stan Jonathan.

A hearing is expected on Friday, and either Colin Campbell or Gary Bettman has to conduct one before any player can be suspended more than five games. ProHockeyTalk suggests as much as 15 games, while Chris Botta insists on 20. That might be pushing it, but 5-10 sounds right from here because this incident crossed a non-negotiable line, not just in hockey, but in any sport. Puck Daddy, among others, agrees. Regardless, the NHL has a chance to send a clear message to every player. To further it, the fan Rypien grabbed is considering legal action.

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Somewhat lost in the NFL’s crackdown on hits to the helmet is that it’s been an eventful several days on the same front for the NHL. On top of the ban which took effect this season on blindside hits (too late to save Kris Letang from an ejection last weekend on a hit to Blake Comeau that probably looked more like it was illegal at the speed in which the referees saw it than it actually was), and a possible concussion for Drew Doughty, over 250 people associated with the game met at the Mayo Clinic this week to discuss safety issues. Two things came out of the summit. First, cutting head injuries from the sport will require a lengthy, concerted effort at all levels of the game. Punishing blatantly dangerous hits both within the game and with suspensions, developing better helmets, plus keeping concussed players off the ice longer will not solve the problem individually. Put together, they stand a chance. Second, the NHL may need to go one step further and abolish all contact to the head, as is already the case in college hockey and in national team games. Former referee Kerry Fraser and many doctors at the summit suggested exactly that. For now, the NHL is sticking with the status quo. Any attempt to change it might spark a bigger debate, at least until more young players can grow up being trained to play the game a different way. For the time being, Bruins fans don’t have to worry about Zdeno Chara being neutralized by the rulebook.

Past generations of players were not necessarily tougher about playing through pain. Rather, we as a society have simply learned far more about head injuries and their cost with each passing year.