Breaking news: An NHL team will benefit from the salary cap ceiling going up more than expected.
I hope you read that opening line with the thick layer of sarcasm that I had hoped you would. Really, though, I know that saying that the cap potentially jumping up to the $95-97 million range versus the earlier-reported number of $92.5 million figure would be massive for the Oilers is a very obvious statement but it would come with a bunch of benefits for this Oilers team.
Before we talk more about just how much flexibility they could gain, let’s first get a better idea of their cap picture heading into next season. As it sits right now, if the cap were to rise to $92.5 million as it’s currently projected, the Oilers would have $16.1 million in cap space with this as their lineup:
Nugent-Hopkins – McDavid – Hyman
Kane – Draisaitl – Arvidsson
Podkolzin – Henrique – Janmark
??? – ??? – ???
Ekholm – RFA
Nurse – ???
Kulak – Stecher
Skinner – Pickard
So, basically, the Oilers would have $16.1 million to sign Evan Bouchard (the restricted free agent on the top pairing), an entire fourth line, a top-four defenseman, a seventh defenseman, and potentially an extra forward. That’s pretty tight.
Let’s say Bouchard’s next deal comes in around $9 million annually, which is lower than what we were projecting at the start of this season but I’m sure will cause a lot of you to roll your eyes. Then the team will have $7 million to sign six players.
We could also assume one of those open spots will go to Matt Savoie, who is still on his ELC, and one will go to Noah Philp, who should come in around league minimum. That’s roughly $1.6m on two players. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say they bring back Connor Brown at around $1.25m.
Now they have a full group of 12 forwards that looks like this:
Nugent-Hopkins – McDavid – Hyman
Kane – Draisaitl – Arvidsson
Podkolzin – Henrique – Savoie
Brown – Philp – Janmark
With that setup and Bouchard signed for $9 million, in this hypothetical world, the Oilers would have $4.15 million left to sign two defensemen, one of which would have to play in their top four. That isn’t a lot of space and could force GM Stan Bowman to make some tough decisions.
One way that they could offload some cap space would be to get out of the final year of Evander Kane’s deal, which would free up north of $5 million but also might cost them an asset depending on how he looks once returning from his injury. Also, that would create a hole in their forward lineup. If you subtract Kane, then you need to go out and replace him and that’ll cost money.
Sure, you could go find a lottery ticket-style veteran player like they have in the past with players like Connor Brown and Jeff Skinner, but those are never a sure thing and again, they will eat up a chunk of the savings you’d get from moving out Kane.
They could also trade another veteran forward like Arvidsson or Henrique, but none of them are really overpaid and again, you’d have to replace them anyway, so the savings wouldn’t be that significant.
The point is this: the Oilers don’t really have an easy way to free up money next summer and that’s what makes this news about a potentially large change in the cap ceiling very important to their future plans. The roster is pretty locked in for next season, which is why the rumblings that the salary cap might shoot up an extra $5 million is very significant.
Assuming the seventh defenseman that they sign comes in at $1 million (or is just Josh Brown) then the cap going up is the difference between the Oilers needing to find a partner for Darnell Nurse at just a $3.35 million cap hit or having closer to $8 million.
This could also have an impact on how they operate at the deadline, which is why it’s important that they get confirmation on this sooner rather than later.
If the Oilers can keep accruing cap space for some long stretches this season, then they could acquire a defenseman who makes close to $4 million. If that defenseman has term, however, they could be hard-pressed to squeeze him in next season if the cap is going to stay at the original projection of $92.5 million.
As a true Stanley Cup contender, every dollar matters and with the money that the Oilers have dished out in previous seasons, along with some expensive extensions that will be kicking in over the next couple of years, you could argue that no team needs this potential cap jump more than Edmonton.
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