What the salary cap increase means for the Montreal Canadiens

The NHL projects the salary cap to range anywhere from $78-82 million for the 2018-19 season. What does that mean for the Montreal Canadiens?

The past couple of days in NHL land has been pretty interesting. Ownership of the Carolina Hurricanes is settled and, spoiler alert, there are no plans for the team to move. Additionally, it looks like the Montreal Canadiens are going to have another team in the NHL to compete with as the league accepted an expansion application from Seattle.

As big as that is, that’s something that won’t happen for another two or three years. However, the most recent expansion team in the Vegas Golden Knights are going to be helping out a lot of teams next season.

Gary Bettman told reporters at the end of the governor meetings that the salary cap for the 2018-19 season will be somewhere between $78 and $82 million. Even at the bare minimum, that’s a $3 million increase which could do wonders.

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Focusing on the Habs

The Montreal Canadiens aren’t one of those teams in trouble cap-wise and haven’t been dating back to the offseason. Although Marc Bergevin doesn’t want to make use of the cap space now (which is currently a little under $6.5 million), there’s no telling what happens later on in the season. Taking on a bad contract could help the team get a valuable asset to help for a playoff run.

We’re going to fast forward to this upcoming offseason here. The Habs will have eight restricted free agents and eight unrestricted free agents. Key RFAs include Phillip Danault, Charlie Lindgren, Jacob de La Rose, and Daniel Carr. On the UFA end, you have Tomas Plekanec, Jakub Jerabek, and Nicolas Deslauriers. There are others, but these players will most likely be a priority for Habs management.

Re-signing the majority of the RFAs is going to take some serious coin. I wrote an article on what Danault’s next contract could be, and somewhere in the $4-4.5 million range makes sense for both sides. Lindgren, on the other hand, could cause some problems.

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Andrew Zadarnowski of Habs Eyes on the Prize wrote a great piece on the future of the goaltender in the organization. Considering how well he played and that he was serious starter potential, he could ask for more than what the Montreal Canadiens are willing to give to him.

Moving on to the UFAs, Jerabek is getting better in every NHL game he plays. It’s only a matter of time before the points start to come his way. It would be in the Habs best interest to resign him if he continues trending in this direction and again that’s more money.

Then there’s free agent frenzy on Canada Day. There could be a lot of names available including Rick Nash, Joe Thornton, and Paul Stasny to name a few. Of course, Montreal’s priority will be John Tavares if he remains unsigned, and that could be a cap-hit of minimum $9 or $10 million.

This cap increase gives the Habs more options when dealing with their contracts at the end of the season. Perhaps now there’s someone who they were preparing to let walk who they can find room to keep now.

There are a lot more possibilities for the summer with this news. Hopefully, we don’t have to wait months for Bergevin to make use of it.

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Are you excited about the salary cap increase? What will the Montreal Canadiens do with it? Let us know your thoughts down below.