The New Jersey Devils were one of the teams trying to acquire Smith, but weren’t willing to meet the Flyers’ demands.

Expectations are the Smith will become a free agent and sign with the Devils in the summer.

Despite injuries to two of their blueliner, Chuck Gormley of the Courier Post Online reports that the Flyers will not call-up defenseman Denis Gauthier from their AHL affiliate team.

Gauthier would have to pass through waivers in order to be promoted to the big club, meaning teams could claim him at half the cost of his $2.1 million salary. Since the Flyers would be on the hook for the other half, it’s unlikely they will go through with it.

If Pittsburgh Penguins pending restricted free agent forward Evgeni Malkin demand a contract worth an average of between $9-10 million per season, John Buccigross of ESPN.com suggests the club should consider trading him.

The Washington Post’s Tarik El-Bashir reports that it remains unclear which of the Washington Capitals’ three deadline acquisitions, namely goalie Cristobal Huet, and forwards center Sergei Fedorov and Matt Cooke, will be back with the club next season.

All three are pending UFAs.

According to The Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinzawa, Tampa Bay Lightning GM Jay Feaster’s next move will be to get Vincent Lecavalier’s name on a multi-year contract extension.

Lecavalier, who can become a UFA after next season, will undoubtedly look for as big a raise as he can get. And if that is too much for the Lightning to accept, Lecavalier could end up being “the most highly pursued UFA-to-be” before next year’s trade deadline.

Shinzawa also reports that the Ottawa Senators are negotiating a contract extension with pending RFA forwards Chris Kelly and Antoine Vermette, as well as Andrej Meszaros, all of which due for substantial raises.

Forward Chris Neil, who becomes a UFA after next season, could also be in line for a raise on his $1.1 million average salary.

A UFA this summer, defenseman Wade Redden will also need to be re-signed. However, he may be too expensive for the Senators.

One way that Senators GM Bryan Murray can clear some payroll by trading enigmatic goalie Ray Emery, if he can find a team to take him.

Lastly from Shinzawa, he reports that a number of teams have called the Boston Bruins to inquire about the availability of forward Milan Lucic.

The fight – Calgary has 66 points in 59 games played. They are tied with the Vancouver Canucks in the NW Division and are only a single point ahead of the Colorado Avalanche. Overall, they currently sit in 8th spot – the cusp of the Western Conference play-off bubble – tied in points with the Phoenix Coyotes, and with the aforementioned Avs (65), St Louis Blues (63) and Columbus Blue Jackets (63) hot on their tail. Fan and media expectations for the Flames have rarely been higher heading into the season, considering the quality and expense of the players on the roster. As such, there is considerable pressure on Sutter and Flames upper-management to succeed now. Put simply, missing the post-season is not an option.

The Cap – This season Sutter locked up a bunch of the Flames heavy lifters to long-term contracts. Robyn Regehr, Jarome Iginla, Miika Kiprusoff and Dion Phaneuf were all granted multi-year extensions, with a majority of them getting hefty raises to boot. So while the organization’s core is in place, Flames management faces the difficult task of re-signing or replacing the likes of Kristian Huselius, Damond Langkow, Craig Conroy, Stephane Yelle, David Hale and Owen Nolan in the off-season on a thread-bare budget. To give context to the severity of the situation, four of those players are currently top 6 forwards for the Flames. With about 48M already committed to next year and the cap purportedly rising to something between 54 and 58M, Sutter has roughly 6-10M in projected cap-space to work with. Or, in more qualitative terms: “not nearly enough”.

The UFAs – The primary assets of concern heading into the deadline are Huselius and Langkow. They both enjoyed career seasons last year, each scoring 77 points, and both are on pace to score 60+ points again this season. As such, both are in line for significantly larger deals this summer (Huselius makes 1.4M this year, Langkow 2.442M). They represent two thirds of the Flames #1 line right now (with Jarome Iginla) and each could likely command upwards of 5M/year on the open market come July.

The Conundrum – Sutter now faces the difficult decision of liquidating his attractive UFAs at the deadline, with the concurrent risk of hobbling the team’s chances of making the play-offs and/or achieving post-season success. Alternatively, he faces the equally unpleasant possibility of keeping Huselius and Langkow for the stretch drive, falling in the first or second round anyways, and then losing them for nothing in the summer.

Given that Calgary is going to need some relative bargains up front to cheaply but effectively fill out their forward roster in the near future, acquiring young but established players, plus the odd prospect and/or draft pick (read: draft day bargaining chips) at the deadline is likely an attractive option for the Flames GM. Whether Sutter deals one or both of Langkow/Huselius will depend on the nature of the packages offered. A roster player that is signed beyond this season to a relatively cheap salary + a decent prospect/pick might just do the trick. Example: Ottawa is said to be looking for more secondary scoring at the deadline. Kristian Huselius for Antoine Vermette or Chris Kelly+a draft pick might make sense for both teams.

The Salary Dumps – The Flames also have a lot of “roster fat” that Sutter would no doubt like to trim in order to increase that 6-10M in (potential) cap room next year. Players like Wayne Primeau (20GP, 2g-2a-4pts, -5), Marcus Nilsoin (28 GP, 2g-1a-3pts, +3) and Rhett Warrener (27GP, 0g-3a-3pts, -1) contribute little and fail to justify their respective cap-hits (1.4M, 1M and 2.35M). Each is signed beyond this season and each could conceivably be replaced by a farm-hand or bargain basement replacement (500k) without really effecting the club’s on-ice performance. With that in mind, Sutter may look to package one or more of these guys if he does decide to deal any of his other attractive pieces in the next 7 days or so.

Conclusions -

In short, the Flames:

- Have a lot of roster holes to plug next season and little cap space with which to do it.

- Have an urgent need to make the play-offs this year, with an inexorable tooth-and-nail stretch drive staring them in the face.

As such, they:

- Cannot trade for big contracts that extend beyond this year (unless they trade some of their own).

- Need to retain their high value contracts (ie: bargains, ie: Matt Lombardi @ 1.83M/year).

- Would like to get value for Langkow or Huselius now without doing too much damage to the roster and hobbling their post-season aspirations.

- Would like to deal away some of the “empty calories” that are bloating their total salary/cap hit.

Keep this stuff in mind when reading Calgary trade rumors in the media heading into next Tuesday. Whatever happens, I’m certain that this trade deadline is going to be a very interesting one for Flames fans.

“Who wouldn’t want to stay here?” he said yesterday. “Look at the guys they’ve signed to stay here for a long time. This team is going to be a contender for many years. It’s a great city and a great place to play.”

“It’s a great organization, the only one I’ve known. I think a lot of organizations wouldn’t have stuck by me, would have cut me loose before I made it to the NHL.”

“If we can work something out by the end of the season, that’d be great,” he said.

However, Kelly could become a salary cap casualty.

Having signed Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley to expensive long-term deals, and still needing to re-sign forwards Antoine Vermette and Patrick Eaves and defenseman Andrej Meszaros, Senators GM Bryan Murray is running out of cap room.

Since the aforementioned trio are expected to be priorities over Kelly, the writing could be on the wall for the hard-working forward.

Still, Kelly remains hopefully he will return to the Senators.

“Something will get done, I’m hoping, between Bryan and my agent, and then we’ll go from there.”

That list includes UFA forwards Dany Heatley, Mike Fisher and Chris Kelly and defenseman Wade Redden, and RFA Jason Spezza.

“We will be proactive as much as we can be,” said Murray in a conference call yesterday.

“We’re interested in talking as early as possible and seeing where we can get with them.”

But while Murray says that he will do his best to re-sign all his pending free agents before they hit the market, he warns that if any of them become to expensive, they could be let go.

“We’ll find out where the numbers have to be and then we’ll have to make some decisions. They’ll be hard decisions, there’s no question about it.”

Heatley is likely to command the most, at around $7.5 million per season. Fisher is expected to double his current annual salary of $1.5 million.

As for Redden, if he wants to remain in Ottawa, he will have to take a pay cut on the $6.5 million he’ll earn this season.