flames' opening night roster: PARDY TIME !!!

[note: the adjustment in the headline purely ripped off of colby cosh's comment over at the BofA]

the first step towards the team's final cuts began today, and there was really no surprise: warrener, eriksson, and lundmark were all put on waivers. when lundmark was re-signed this summer, it was almost certainly to add a veteran presence in the quad cities, and (despite a solid training camp) today's move appears to confirm this as the club's imminent plan.

that warrener and eriksson were placed on waivers this morning all-but announces that adam pardy will remain with the parent club as the seventh blueliner for (at least) the beginning of the 08/09 season. in my opinion, this is by far the safest move, as placing him on waivers seems a sure way to lose a cheap, young, NHL-ready blueliner with a ton of potential.

while lundmark is likely headed to the QC, there has been a lot of speculation as to where the 4-million dollars worth of blueliners will go. daz has been quoted as saying nobody will be bought out, "We explore opportunities to find places for players. If not, we want them to honour their contract(s). .. There are 18 teams that have buyouts as part of their cap this year, and we felt that's not what we want them to do." (calgary sun). obviously this points to the idea of trying to place them on an NHL team, but opens the door to other (more likely, at this point) possibilities. while most pundits think they will end up, like lundmark, as veteran s in the A, there has (in the last few days) been a resurgence in the "send'em to europe" option.

my current thoughts are that rhettro will spend the year in iowa/illinois while the organization witll try to send eriksson further away (read: sweden). if this actually transpires, it will restore much of my faith in the sutter-helmed front office, as i firmly believe warrener can contribute to the development of guys like pelech, palin, and cole, while eriksson will contribute to nurturing of bad habits. i believe it was with duncan, over beers this past summer, that we discussed the merits of sending rhettro to the QC: he plays out this contract and leads the young guns for a season, then takes a place on the bench alongside ryan mcgill in 09/10. clearly he's a standup guy that the calgary flames organization would be glad to keep on in some way (jamie mclennan styles)...

in other news, daz had some very nice and somewhat surprising things to say about my boy john armstrong. the calgary herald has him quoted as saying, "'No one talked about Armstrong the whole camp,' Sutter said of the 20-year-old, nabbed 87th overall in the 2006 draft,'" [further proof that daz is not a regular hitthepost reader]. "From my standpoint, I've seen him enough . . . to know where he was. He came from a good program (Peterborough of the Ontario Hockey League), a captain. A really good two-way player. If he hadn't (injured his leg during camp), he was really close to making our team.'"

um. wow. that's huge praise.... HUUGE praise....
:)