Boston Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli will have a little more wiggle room to fill out his roster for this upcoming season. The NHL announced that its salary cap will be $59.4M for this 2010-11 season, up from last year’s $56.8M ceiling. The salary floor will be set at $43.4M.

With 17 players inked for the Black-and-Gold, the cap-space they now have is just north of $5M according to capgeek.com. Boston still has Mark Recchi, Steve Begin and Miroslav Satan as their impending unrestricted free-agents come July 1—with only Recchi expected to be re-signed. Of the impending restricted free-agents: Mark Stuart, Vladimir Sobotka, Blake Wheeler, Greg Campbell, and Daniel Paille have yet to be inked.

With a roster not yet complete, Chiarelli seems to have to put his foot on the accelerator to find Tim Thomas ($5M cap-hit) a new home for this upcoming season, especially with the amount of players he’s expected to keep.

Other notable impending UFA’s in Providence: goaltender Dany Sabourin, center Drew Larman.
RFA’s: goaltender Kevin Regan, defensemen Andrew Bondarchuk and Adam McQuaid, and forward Mikko Lehtonen.