The 2024-25 hockey season has arrived with teams setting their season-opening rosters on Monday.
The deadline to do so came and went at 3 p.m. MST, and the Edmonton Oilers have gotten creative, putting themselves in a position to have $53 — yes, you read that right — in salary cap space on Tuesday, with Evander Kane landing on the Long-Term Injured Reserve, according to PuckPedia.
Before that, the team submitted their opening day roster with Kane on the active roster, and with Matthew Savoie recalled to the big club. The Oilers did so to maximize their cap space when Kane ends up on the LTIR.
According to The Athletic’s Daniel Nugent-Bowman, having Savoie on the season-opening roster will allow the team a performance-bonus-LTIR pool of $1-million. This, in turn, means that when Kane lands on LTIR and the team were to recall Savoie to the big club, his cap hit would count for $886,666 against the cap, instead of $1,866,666.
It’s a shrewd move from the Oilers, allowing them the opportunity to maximize how much space the team could have. It’s also an indication that Savoie might be up with the big club sooner than some may think. Since joining the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors, he’s played in two pre-season games coming as advertised, with a goal and four points in them.
As it stands Monday, the club will open the season Tuesday with $952,053 in cap space.
The Oilers signed Cameron Wright to a one-year, $952,000 contract on Monday, but his deal won’t be officially filed with the league until Tuesday. Then, the team is expected to assign him, and Savoie, to the AHL’s Condors.
All signs point to Travis Dermott signing with the team after a great pre-season, and given Wright and Savoie’s impending assignments, the team will still be cap-compliant, with his deal likely around the league minimum of $775,000.
Edmonton’s roster will then feature 12 forwards, six defencemen and two goaltenders: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Viktor Arvidsson, Jeff Skinner, Mattias Janmark, Adam Henrique, Connor Brown, Vasily Podkolzin, Derek Ryan, Corey Perry, Mattias Ekholm, Evan Bouchard, Darnell Nurse, Ty Emberson, Brett Kulak, Troy Stecher, Travis Dermott, Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard.
While Kane going on the LTIR opens up his $5.125-millon in pool space, allowing the Oilers to exceed the salary cap by that amount of money, the team will already be cap compliant. That will allow them to accrue salary cap space, save for $53, up to the NHL’s March 7th trade deadline.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
