The Bruins, the cap and July 1

(Updated to include Gregory Campbell)

With the opening of free agency just about 20 hours away, I thought I’d make sure you all know where the Bruins stand, barring a major trade between now and noon Thursday.

As per the indispensable CapGeek.com, the Bruins have 16 NHL players under contract for 2010-11 at a total cap hit of $53,902,976. Factoring in $700,000 in bonuses, the Bruins would have $6,197,024 to spend under the $59.4 million cap.

The calculations I did included the following players:

Forwards (9): Patrice Bergeron, Milan Lucic, Marc Savard, Shawn Thornton, Mark Recchi, Michael Ryder, David Krejci, Nathan Horton, Marco Sturm

Defensemen (5): Zdeno Chara, Dennis Seidenberg, Matt Hunwick, Johnny Boychuk, Andrew Ference

Goaltenders (2): Tuukka Rask, Tim Thomas

Don’t forget the Bruins still hope to re-sign restricted free agents Blake Wheeler, Mark Stuart and Gregory Campbell. Stuart’s second NHL contract carried a $1.3 million cap hit last season, while Wheeler was making $875,000 plus bonuses on his entry-level deal and Campbell made $800,000. You can expect Wheeler and Stuart would receive slight raises to put their combined cap hit at about $2.6 million and Campbell would probably make around the same or less.

Daniel Paille will be unrestricted July 1 after the Bruins didn’t tender him a qualifying offer as a restricted free agent. The team, however, is negotiating with him to bring him back for something close to his 2009-10 cap hit ($1.1 million).

Then you factor in Tyler Seguin’s entry-level deal ($900,000) and you have 21 players signed with just about $1 million to spend on another one or two players, which could come from within the organization. All teams can go 10 percent over the cap in the summer, but obviously that then requires some major cutting come fall.

Now you see why you should not expect a Bruins bombshell unless they can swing a cap-space-freeing deal between now and noon Thursday.