LeafsParadise.com

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. By the absolute slightest of margins, the Bruins have the most cap dollars committed to players for next season of any team in the NHL. With 23 guys under contract and another quarter-million committed to Patrick Eaves' buyout, they're at nearly $68.9 million for the 2012-13 campaign. We obviously don't know what the final salary cap limit will end up being under the new CBA, but when you are first in the league in it, you're not exactly giving yourself a ton of wiggle room. Now, I know what the argument will be: That includes Tim Thomas' $5 million cap hit, which the Bruins should be able to unload on some team with a need to get up to the floor, as well as Marc Savard's slightly-more-than-$4 million, which will be artificially inflating the team's cap number and then coming off the books annually at the start of every season through 2016-17. So that's a little more than $9 million, bringing the team down to a much more manageable $59.9 million or so. Very manageable, and almost middle-of-the-pack league-wide. But that's all under the League's current salary structure, which we know the NHL would very much like to roll back, and which the Players' Association would like to keep more-or-less as is. Which is what makes Peter Chiarelli's willingness to re-up Brad Marchand for $4.5 million a year over the next four, on a deal that begins in 2013-14, a little baffling. (Coming Up: Dustin Byfuglien, living large; the law vs. the CBA talks; Marian Hossa and the lockout; Bobby Ryan backs off trade request; Joe Sakic is the greatest; Chris Pronger still struggling; Ilya Kovalchuk and Patrik Elias are healthy; Ovie on RGIII; and a wacky Roberto Luongo trade suggestion to ... San Jose.)