Nikolai Khabibulin on waivers!

Sportsnet's Hockey Central at Noon just confirmed that Nikolai Khabibulin has been placed on waivers by the Blackhawks.

WAIVERS!?!? What the heck is going on?

Just to let you know, from the comments on Ek's posting of this news, a lot of people, fans of many teams, are all saying that Ottawa would be dumb NOT to claim him.... they are all worried about how good Ottawa would be if they got "the goalie they have needed".

If we get him, we might need to move some players... would McAmmond and Schubert do?

DashRiprock wrote:Just to let you know, from the comments on Ek's posting of this news, a lot of people, fans of many teams, are all saying that Ottawa would be dumb NOT to claim him.... they are all worried about how good Ottawa would be if they got "the goalie they have needed".

If we get him, we might need to move some players... would McAmmond and Schubert do?

If we claim him NOW, it will take a bit more than Schubert and Deano to make room.

And I doubt he would linger long enough to make it through on re-entry.

This is strange... what is going on?!?

Wow... holy crap what did I miss during lunch!

There is certainly a niche market for this guy, I am not sure that one of the teams below us on the re-entry list would take him? It is a very interesting scenario. I am sure they will do the re-entry thing and see if there are any takers giving them $3.35M in cap relief.

If, as Ek suggests they are packaging a 'blue chip' d prospect with him and willing to take back Gerber, I could see us being a player in this. Basically Gerber for Kahbby and the blue chipper. Them getting $4M in cap relief. It should be an interesting couple of days.

Very strange. I guess a deal could not be made at this point in time and they want to get him off the books. I have a feeling he'll make it all the way through waivers.

This talk of the LA Kings picking him up "just to get to the cap floor" is silly. They're only just over a million away form the floor and have yet to sign O'sullivan and will probably want to suck for another year to get a high first round pick.

According to Hockeybuzz Cap site... we only have $2,722,671 in cap space? Yikes.

McAmmond = 875,000
Schubert = 883,333
---------------------------------
= 1,758,333
+2,722,671
----------------------------------
=4,481,004 cap space = still not enough for Khabi

Meaning, it's likely we'd have to move Vermette or Kelly, or Gerber as well.

Colorado nearly has enough Might they take him?

Oh yeah, this is going to be very interesting for the next couple of days.

I wonder if Murray will snag him outright... or wait for re-entry and try to have something in place so no one else lays claim to him...? It's weird.

I'll have to check and see where the Sens are in terms of the cap...

Well IMO, it would be insanly stupid to keep both Khabby and Gerber... So if we were to pick up Khabby then it is pretty safe to say Gerber would be leaving town pretty soon...

I've done that already, see above post. $2,722,671 available right now.

hehe, I just saw that Dash. thanks dude.

It's just making my head spin even more trying to figure out what Murray's thinking! LOL

shabbs wrote:Very strange. I guess a deal could not be made at this point in time and they want to get him off the books. I have a feeling he'll make it all the way through waivers.

This talk of the LA Kings picking him up "just to get to the cap floor" is silly. They're only just over a million away form the floor and have yet to sign O'sullivan and will probably want to suck for another year to get a high first round pick.

Oh, he'll pass through waivers, no doubt. His salary is just too high. It'll be the Schneider scenario all over again: they'll either bring him in on re-entry waivers and bite the bullet on eating half of his salary, or work out a trade with someone in which Chicago takes back salary and/or gives up assets.

Sens won't bite on this one, not on standard waivers. If Chicago puts him on re-entry waivers or is willing to take back salary, we may be interested. We probably won't get a shot at him on re-entry waivers, tho' -- I'd think LA and COL would be ahead of us in the waiver queue to claim him, although I'm not sure how that works.

Kind of a dumb move, when you think about it. It will just confirm that there's no market for Khabby at his current price, just as happened with Schneider. Looks like Khabby is on the move now for sure, tho'.

The expendable's we have right now are McAmmond and Schubert. I'd hate to lose Neil right now though.

If we got Khabi, there'd be no use here for Gerber, so he'd have to be traded to accommodate Khabi's cap hit.