A pair of Caps signings were announced today: Brooks Laich has signed a three-year contract worth $2.067 million per year and Sergei Fedorov has signed a one-year, $4 million dollar deal.

While each signing makes sense in terms of the fairness of the dollar value, the additional 6.067 million dollars in salary cap space puts Washington in a salary cap crunch situation: according to nhlnumbers.com, the Capitals are now just $1.18 million below next season’s $56.7 million cap - and Shaone Morrisonn, Eric Fehr and Boyd Gordon are all without contracts for the 2008-09 season.

Obviously there’s no way Morrisonn, Fehr and Gordon will all fit under the salary cap given the team’s current salary structure. In fact, as is it’d be unrealistic to expect to even get Morrisonn alone re-signed without exceeding the cap.

The wild card in this situation is Brian Pothier, who is still recovering from a serious concussion suffered as the result of a body check by Boston’s Milan Lucic. According to George McPhee, Pothier is expected to start new season on the long-term injury reserve list, which would prevent his salary from counting against the salary cap as long as he was physically unable to play. If Pothier is unable to play at all next season the team will find itself with an additional $2.5 million in salary cap space. Under these circumstances, the Capitals would have approximately $3.7 million in cap space to devote towards signing their remaining restricted free agents. Even then it may still be a tight squeeze for the team. Just how close a squeeze depends on what kind of contract Morrisonn ends up signing or being awarded, should he wind up going to arbitration.

What makes the most sense for the Capitals to do at this point is to make an effort to get Morrisonn under contract for $2 million or less, which would probably still afford the team enough cap space to re-sign both Gordon and Fehr. Should they be unable to come to an agreement with Morrisonn, the team would be best served to take a “wait and see” approach and wait until Morrisonn’s July 24th arbitration hearing, determine what impact his salary for next season has on their plans and move forward from that point.

If Morrisonn’s arbitration decision makes it infeasible to re-sign both former first round draft picks, it is most likely Boyd Gordon will be the odd man out. The signing of Fedorov means that the Capitals already have three top-flight centers (Nicklas Backstrom and Michael Nylander being the others). That, plus the fact that the Capitals have a effective checking line center and penalty killer already under contract for next season in David Steckel, suggest Gordon would struggle to find much playing time on the team. Additionally Fehr is two years younger, has more offensive upside, is a more physical presence and plays what is arguably the forward position with the least depth for the Capitals.

Should the team still find itself in salary cap trouble if Gordon is dropped, or if McPhee and his staff decide they want to keep both Gordon and Fehr, it is possible a veteran could be waived or bought out to free up space, with John Erskine being the player most likely to be deemed expendable. It is also possible the Capitals could become involved in the trade market, but most of the Caps young talent is going to be off limits and most of the team’s veterans are worth more than what they would bring in via a trade. Thus if any trade were going to occur, it would likely be of the rights to either Fehr or Gordon.