"Jay Feaster spent the weekend in St. Paul, Minn., but it's almost like he went to Las Vegas.
The Calgary Flames GM now has money to spend like he hit a jackpot or something.
With about US$7 million off the books for next season thanks the Robyn Regehr trade, Feaster has the flexibility to be one of those players in both free agency and the trade market.
"We're open for business," Feaster said Monday upon returning to the Saddledome from the draft in St. Paul, Minn. "We wanted to create that flexibility. We're in a much better position today with flexibility than we were going into the draft."
The Flames have some holes to fill and could obviously upgrade at a several positions. Feaster has already made a big splash when it comes to remaking a team that has missed the playoffs the past two seasons.
In shipping out rugged blueliner Robyn Regehr (cap hit $4 million) and underachieving winger Ales Kotalik ($3 million) to the Buffalo Sabres, Feaster got himself out of a salary-cap crunch for next season.
With about $7.5 million to play with before clearing out a contract such as Niklas Hagman's ($3 million), the Flames could be players on the free-agency market.
What intrigues Feaster more is waiting to see if he can snag a decent value by waiting. That's happened in the past few years but the Flames were usually up against the cap by July 2."
