Montreal Canadiens: Salary Cap Problems Could be on Horizon

Montreal Canadiens history with the salary cap was to stay far away from it for a few years.

After Andrei Markov and Alex Radulov left via free agency in 2017, the team just didn’t go near the cap for three seasons. Heading into the 2020-21 season, they added Josh Anderson, Joel Edmundson, Jake Allen and Tyler Toffoli and were once again a cap team.

This year, they are hovering just over the cap, but with Shea Weber on long-term injured reserve it isn’t a big problem. That could change next season.

Not that the cap is about to tear the team apart, but for the first time the Canadiens may need to unload a player they would rather keep due to cap constraints. We have seen Marc Bergevin make salary cap related trades in the past, but it was usually finding a way to rid himself of an undesirable contract like Rene Bourque’s, Daniel Briere’s or Andrew Shaw who was moved due to a combination of injury history and cap hit.

But next season, we could see a good player traded away simply for cap space.

The Canadiens recently re-signed Nick Suzuki to an eight year contract that will carry a cap hit of $7.875 million. That is a huge increase from the cap hit of $863,333 that he has this season. Couple that with the fact the only contracts worth more than a million coming off the books are Ben Chiarot’s $3.5 million and Brett Kulak’s $1.85 million and the Habs are going to have some tough decisions to make.

Right now, they have 11 forwards, just three defencemen and their two goalies under contract for the 2022-23 season and have committed $75.4 million to those players. This total does not include Shea Weber or his contract since he will be on LTIR or retired before next season begins.

With the cap likely to stay close to $81.5 million again next season, that gives the Habs about $6 million in cap space to add at least one forward and three defenders to the roster. That only brings them to the minimum, so they’d like to have three forwards and four D added somehow with just $6 million in cap space.

That likely can not happen. Although, the Habs could go with a bunch of youngsters to fill the void. Let’s say Ryan Poehling and Jesse Ylonen are the forwards that are added to the roster next season. Also, on the blue line Kaiden Guhle and Mattias Norlinder make the team out of camp. That would be four young players all earning less than a million per year.

The problem that would yet to be addressed is re-signing a couple of RFAs in Artturi Lehkonen and Alexander Romanov. It would be extremely difficult to fit either of them in to next year’s plans without removing another player from the team.

There is a long time before they have to make a decision, and a lot can happen between now and then to make the decision easier. One thing is for certain, the Habs will have to move out a player that is already under contract before the 2022-23 season begins.

With Joel Armia and Paul Byron making $3.4 million each and both fourth liners on a healthy roster, it’s doubtful they are both on the team next season.