Tag: Salary Cap

Plenty of Player Movement Remaining

Published on by JD Lagrange

By JD Lagrange – Coming into mid-July, it seems like news around the NHL is rather sparse. Sports media and bloggers, particularly in Canada where the focus is almost solely on hockey, are scraping the bottom of the barrel for content as teams are seemingly in slow-motion. Historically speaking, the month of August is when NHL General Managers are the least active, taking some much needed time off to recharge for next season.

Yet, the hardcore hockey fan sees that there is still plenty of work needing to be done with their own team, and across the league. As we sit here with a cold beer by our swimming pool playing hockey experts, we can see some very notorious and even impactful unrestricted free agents, such as:

  • Patrick Kane
  • Vladimir Tarasenko
  • Josh Bailey
  • Zach Parise
  • Tomas Tatar
  • Nick Ritchei
  • Maxime Comtois
  • Matt Dumba
  • Ethan Bear
  • Caleb Jones
  • …

While Alex DeBrincat, Blake Wheeler and Pierre-Luc Dubois (amongst others) have all found new homes for the upcoming seasons, there are still a few big names awaiting a trade.

The Erik Karlsson saga is still dragging on as seemingly, the Pittsburgh Penguins are trying to fiscally make it work. Then, you have not one, but two prominent goaltenders who are itching to get out of their respective town. Connor Hellebuyck has had enough of the Jets, while John Gibson is on record saying that he has played his last game for the Anaheim Ducks.

The issue with the names remaining? A simple table might paint the best picture here:

NAMEAGECLAUSE2023-242024-252025-262026-272027-28
E. Karlsson33NMC$11.5M$11.5M$11.5M$11.5MUFA
J. Gibson29*M-NTC$6.4M$6.4M$6.4M$6.4M
C. Hellebuyck30–$6.17MUFA
* 10-teams no-trade list

Canadiens done?

Alex Newhook and Rafaël Harvey-Pinard have agreed to terms on a new contract, and the Canadiens announced today the signing of Nicolas Beaudin and Lucas Condotta on two-way deals. Jesse Ylönen has yet to put his name at the bottom of a new contract at the time of writing this.

As we’ve recently touched on, the Canadiens have a surplus of NHL caliber players. In that piece, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve jumped the gun a bit, sounding the alarm when there is still time left to do something about those numbers.

So seeing teams so close to the cap and key players still on the market, one would think that there is still plenty of player-movement left to be done this off-season across the NHL. Can or will the Canadiens be able to unload some contracts? With the team so tight to the cap, Kent Hughes will have to be pretty creative to make that happen, particularly that the candidates he’s trying to unload don’t have a big market value.

With that said, while I will admit not being over optimistic to see some old vets go, I’ve lived long enough to know to never say never. Que sera, sera…

Habs Salary Cap – Reprise

Published on by rwtrask107532 Comments

By Bob Trask – Earlier I took a look at the Habs salary cap situation an outlined a couple of options available to Kent Hughes. Today, I am presenting a hypothetical season-opening roster with the following assumptions:

  • Jesse Ylonen and Alex Newhook will sign for the approximate amounts estimated by AFP Analytics
  • Carey Price will be placed on LTIR
  • Mike Hoffman, Chris Wideman and Rem Pitlick will be assigned to Laval if no trades are made

Roster

1Jake Allen$3,850,000
2Samuel Montembeault$1,000,000
3Mike Matheson$4,875,000
4Kaiden Guhle$863,333
5Jordan Harris$1,400,000
6Arber Xhekaj$828,333
7David Savard$3,500,000
8Justin Barron$925,000
9Jonathan Kovacevic$766,667
10Nick Suzuki$7,875,000
11Kirby Dach$3,362,500
12Christian Dvorak$4,450,000
13Jake Evans$1,700,000
14Juraj Slafkovsky$950,000
15Josh Anderson$5,500,000
16Brendan Gallagher$6,500,000
17Joel Armia$3,400,000
18Jesse Ylonen (estimated)$875,000
19Cole Caufield$7,850,000
20Sean Monahan$1,985,000
21Alex Newhook (estimated)$2,260,000
22Rafael Harvey-Pinard$1,100,000
23Michael Pezzetta$812,500
Mike Hoffman ($1.15M buried)$3,350,000
Rem Pitlick (contract buried)$0
Chris Wideman (contract buried)$0
Edmundson retained$1,7500,000
Alzner buyout$833,333
Bonus overage penalty$1,170,000
Total$73,731,666

This roster would have a cap hit of $73,731,666 leaving the Canadiens with $8,768,344 in cap space. If Price’s contract is added in to the totals, the cap hit would be $84,231,66 or above the season opening cap limit by $1,731,666.

Should the Canadiens want to maximize their LTIR flexibility, they could try to come as close as possible to the $82.5M cap limit on the opening day roster including Price’s contract. That would mean reducing the roster by $1,731,666 or as little above that as possible. How could that be done?

If Kent Hughes assigned Juraj Slafkovsky and Arber Xhekaj to Laval, the team would save $1,778,333 and put them within $46,667 of the salary cap. Both are ineligible for waivers so there would no risk in losing either player. It would leave the Canadiens with a roster of 22 players, one under the league maximum.

While it seems counter-intuitive to send two of your most promising young players to the AHL, it would be a paper transaction only. Once the season got underway, Price would be destined to LTIR while Slafkovsky and Xhekaj would reassume their positions on the Canadiens roster and bring the roster back up to a full complement of 23 players.

The end result is a massive amount of cap space. Hughes could use that at the trade deadline to acquire a player the Habs might desire or he could weaponize that cap space as a third party to facilitate a trade between two cash strapped teams.

The caveat is that another off-season trade could make this entire scenario irrelevant. But the goal here isn’t to predict the outcomes, it is to shed some light on some of the options the Canadiens’ disposal.