The Calgary Flames announced their season-opening roster on Monday afternoon.

The roster contains 23 active players – two goaltenders, eight defencemen and 13 forwards – plus two players on the injury reserve list. Despite having their highest-paid player on the IR to start the season, the Flames have oodles and oodles of salary cap space.

Here’s a quick snapshot of just how much financial flexibility the Flames have.

All-told, the Flames have cap commitments of $85.809 million on their opening roster, which translates to $9.69 million in cap space if carried through the full season.

Three players are on entry-level deals and are eligible for performance bonuses:

The Flames will need to demote two players from the active roster whenever Huberdeau and Pospisil are ready to return to game action, with both injuries being characterized by the club as short term in nature. The odds are that the waiver-exempt players – Parekh, Gridin and Honzek – are probably the prime contenders to be demoted, with Gridin and Honzek probably the most likely to be AHL-bound, which would reduce their cap commitments by $1.82 million.

That said, Gridin has been really good and will likely have an opportunity to convince the brass that he’s worth keeping around on the NHL roster. In that case, perhaps the Flames opt not to carry eight defenders and send a blueliner down instead.

Either way, regardless of who goes down when the Flames get healthy, they have a ton of salary cap flexibility and will probably continue to have flexibility for the remainder of the season – and potentially they could have even more wiggle room, depending on how a potential Rasmus Andersson trade would shape up.

We’ll see how everything pans out over the next 192 days of the regular season.

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