With the NHL salary cap potentially going down, the Canadiens off-season becomes much more complicated.
In our quest to find potential scoring options for the Canadiens, we’ve covered a wide range of potential free agent options. The players covered have been established top 6 forwards such as Steven Stamkos, Andrew Ladd, Kyle Okposo, Mikkel Boedker, Milan Lucic and even Alexander Radulov.
All 6 of those players have a few things in common. They all have strong track records of success. Aside from Andrew Ladd, they’re in their primes. They all fill an obvious void in the Canadiens lineup. And they are all free agents and will be quite expensive.
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The NHL salary cap is a tricky thing to predict. It is almost exclusively based on NHL revenues and 30-35% of NHL revenue is generated by the seven Canadian teams. For much of the 2015-16 season, the Canadian dollar was worth around $0.70 USD which meant little to no growth in league revenue.
I’m not going to bore you with all the financial know-how that goes into the cap. But the important thing to know is that due to the weak Canadian dollar this year, the NHL salary cap could and likely will suffer.
A few months ago, many speculated the cap could rise to as high as $74 million next year. We get to the end of May and Chris Johnston of Sportsnet tweeted this out:
Next year's NHL salary cap is expected to remain "relatively flat," per Bill Daly.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) May 30, 2016
Fast forward just a week later and we are now getting reports that the salary cap could drop below $70 million. This all stemmed from Elliotte Freidman of Sportsnet who said:
"The players were told this week when they met with the NHLPA that if they don’t vote to increase the salary cap by five per cent, there’s a chance it could go down below $70 million next year,” he said. “Not yet decided, but that’s potentially what they’ve been told.”"
Why is this important to the Canadiens?
We have to get this out of the way now. The cap is not guaranteed to drop. In fact, the cap for 2016-17 has not been set yet and won’t be set for at least another week or two. For all we know, the leaked reports of a lower salary cap could be a scare tactic by the league so the players do invoke that 5% increase.
However, that and everything else at this point is speculation. That’s all we can do right now and a potentially declining salary cap complicates the Canadiens off-season plans.
The Habs already have $64.8 million committed to next year according to General Fanager. They also have 7 potential RFA’s to bring back and have already reportedly extended qualifying offers to Sven Andrighetto, Philip Danault, Daniel Carr and Mark Barberio.
Combined, those 4 players earned just over $2.9 million last year and if we account for modest raises, all 4 combined could cost anywhere from $3.2-$3.5 million. With a potentially drop in the salary cap, that leaves the Canadiens with very little to no room to operate.
Essentially, a lowered salary cap presses the Canadiens into making trades and avoiding free agency. It also means the Canadiens would be more likely to go with in-house options to fill roster voids.
Next: Habs: Pros and Cons of Signing Stamkos
That allows young players like Charles Hudon, Artturi Lehkonen and Martin Reway the perfect opportunity to make the Canadiens out of training camp. Even with having these young players filling roster holes, the Canadiens will need to make a move or two in order to have roster and cap flexibility for later in the season.
This wouldn’t be the first time in recent history that the team has relied on rookies to help fill offensive voids. In the lockout shortened season in 2012-13, the Canadiens roster included rookies Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher. Both featured in top 6 roles on what ended up being a 1st place team.
Regardless of what happens, the next few weeks will be interesting on all fronts. A lot of attention will be paid to the cap situation and it is going to affect all involved one way or another.