NHL Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins roster finally finalized

The Pittsburgh Penguins have completed their almost annual song and dance to comply with the NHL's salary cap and have their roster ready for the start of the season. From the team:

The Pittsburgh Penguins have recalled forwards Zach Sill and Andrew Ebbett and defenseman Taylor Chorney from Wheeling, it was announced today by executive vice president and general manager Jim Rutherford.

The Penguins also assigned forward Kasperi Kapanen to KalPa of the Finnish League and placed forward Beau Bennett on injured reserve.

As Mike Colligan explained, these moves were designed to give the Penguins maximum salary cap flexibility. They've done this before, with cap guru and assistant GM Jason Botterill caressing the system again.

Per Colligan, the Penguins currently have $175,000 in cap space, which is really pretty good considering they have 13 forwards, 8 defensemen (including injured Robert Bortuzzo) and 2 goalies counting against the cap right now. When it is time for Bennett to return- he'll now have to miss 10 games and 24 days, per the CBA, Pittsburgh will have to make a roster move to get him back, likely demoting one of the forwards (Ebbett, Sill) that are on the fringe of the roster.

Bortuzzo, out 2-4 more weeks, is also a potential LTIR candidate, should Pittsburgh suffer another minor injury and need to recall another player. Due to this jockeying though, they already have an extra forward and defensemen lined up, so hopefully it won't come to that.

So here is your 2014-15 Pittsburgh Penguins out of camp:

Forwards (13): Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, Patric Hornqvist, Nick Spaling, Brandon Sutter, Steve Downie, Blake Comeau, Marcel Goc, Andrew Ebbett, Craig Adams, Zach Sill

Defensemen (8): Kris Letang, Paul Martin, Christian Ehrhoff, Rob Scuderi, Simon Despres, Olli Maatta, Taylor Chorney, Robert Bortuzzo

Goaltenders (2): Marc-Andre Fleury, Thomas Greiss

Long-term injured reserve (1): Beau Bennett

With that, the preseason portion of the year is truly over and now the regular season begins with a game against the Anaheim Ducks.