Since the doldrums of last off-season, we have been trying to figure out how Joe Nieuwendyk can possibly improve this team under the budgetary constraints placed on him by Tom Hicks and HSG that prevents them from spend to anywhere near the cap.

The more we looked (like here: "Will Dallas Stars Be Able to Keep Their Young Talent?") the more the question shifted from "How can he improve it?" to "How can he even afford to keep the young RFA's the team has developed and ice a team next year?"

We now have several more pieces of the puzzle that we did not have last August when those discussions became hot and heavy:

(The important thing to remember when having a conversation about Dallas Stars payroll, is that unlike other teams' conversations, we do not care in the least about cap hits. We talk about real payroll dollars)

Stephane Robidas contract extension in October. His cap number is $3.3 million, but his salary next season is only $3.25 million.

Loui Eriksson extended in October. His cap number is $4.267 million, but the first year of the deal (next season) is only $3.2 million.

Steve Ott's contract does the same thing...

Follow the jump for a detailed look at the entire budgetary picture for 2010-2011...

Steve Ott's deal is a $2.95 million cap hit, but his first year on the deal only pays $2.1 million.

Toby Petersen extended yesterday. His salary next year is $750k next season, then goes up to $800k the next.

Same thing with Tom Wandell, extended last week. $700k next year, $850 the year after that.

Every single deal is back-loaded, which, let's face it, might be a bad thing for 2011-2012, but that's not our main concern at the moment. All those projections and guess we were doing were based on average value of the deals, and we were right on the money with some of those guesses. What Gm Joe has done in back-loading them, is he's given himself breathing room to come into next season with a team at least as good as the one he has now, without losing his RFA's.

Here's where they now stand for 2010-2011:



