My concerns are for the following season, namely, how huge of a number is it going to take to keep Pastrnak here? I’d assume he’s looking at $11 million AAV. It would be nice if guys like Beecher and Harrison could develop into top 2 line center options on ELCs by ‘23-‘24.
I'm not overly concerned with Pasta's contract. They will have roughly $30m in space for 23/24 as it stands now and you'd have to assume a combination of Ullmark, Reilly and Forbort will be gone freeing up another $3-11m. The larger issue is lack of talent. Sign Nate, please. I'll settle for Larkin.
Tradeable assets (not advocating moving, just listing):
Hall ($6m AAV, 2 years) - 10 team no trade list after 7/1
Marchand ($6.125m AAV, 2 years) - 15 team no trade list after 7/1
Coyle ($5.25m AAV, 3 years) - 8 team no trade list
Ullmark ($5m AAV, 2 years) - 16 team no trade list after 7/1
Carlo ($4.1m AAV, 4 years)
DeBrusk ($4m AAV, 1 year)
Grzelcyk ($3.6875m AAV, 1 year)
Forbort ($3m AAV, 1 year)
Reilly ($3m AAV, 1 year)
Spoilered the above for space... basically need to move salary out, ice a bottom six, get some D depth, figure out goaltending with Swayman being an RFA. Couple of transactions I could see helping:
Take Frederic to arbitration (get second buyout window is the primary motivation here); estimating $2m for 1 year, walk away if > ~$2.5m AAV)
Prior art: Yakov Trenin scored 17, plays a similar game, was the only arb award last offseason at $1.7m AAV for 2 years
Re-sign Lauko to 1-2 year minimum 1-way deal ($775,000 AAV)
Move out as many of the following as possible: Carlo, Forbort, Reilly
With most teams' cap situations, you'd need to attach Swayman RFA or DeBrusk to a floor team to make it worth their while and make up for not adding draft picks
Example trade: DeBrusk, Forbort, Reilly, and a mid-round pick to Arizona for future considerations, assuming DeBrusk returns a 1st and 2nd for them at the deadline
Forbort and Reilly are both tough to move as they represent $3.5m and $4m respectively in real salary with no signing bonuses
Move Swayman's rights for an RFA young center
Dream scenario for me would be figuring out a trade with LA for Vilardi -- they're in a similarly tough cap position, and have Cal Petersen for 2 more years at $5m AAV
More likely outcome is someone like Edmonton if they can find a taker for Campbell, as they have Ryan McLeod up as an RFA and a tough cap situation
Using McLeod as an example, again likely a bridge deal in the $2-2.5m range, saying $2.2m AAV for roster modeling purposes
Re-sign Bussi / Keyser at league min 1-way OR sign vet goalie to league min ($775,000 AAV)
Use some of the cap space from the clearing move (DeBrusk/Forbort/Reilly wipes $10m even) to sign vets at C, RW, and RD
Example move: Bergeron for $2m if he's not retiring, but assuming he is I would love to figure out a way to get RoR in the mix
Example move: sign Hudson Fasching for $1m AAV
Example move: sign a scrapheap 6D à la Strålman for $1m AAV
Call up Kuntar to be 13F / rotating with the 4th liners
Not good enough in Providence this year and still not physically mature enough for the NHL. Merkulov is closer IMO and his $0.925m cap hit means I think they call him up here and there after a start in the AHL.
Johnston : "With the NHL and NHLPA in discussions about next year's salary cap range, my sense is the union remains open to more than the baked-in $1M bump to $83.5M but won't make concessions to push the ceiling higher. It will likely be at least a month before anything is finalized."
I wonder if $4.5M in bonus money would be enough to convince Bergy to come back just to take faceoffs for the last 90 seconds of games where the opponent's goalie is pulled.
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