The Montreal Canadiens, like every NHL team, have to deal with the minutiae of the salary cap on a daily basis.
Even in a season where the team was stuck at the bottom of the standings all season they were among the leaders in dollars spent. A big part of that was two players who barely played, as the biggest cap hits on the team were Carey Price and Shea Weber.
Price played just five games all season and Weber didn’t play at all, but they combined for a cap hit of over $18 million.
What it all added up to was a team that was spending to the cap. It’s not like the team was trying to add players at the trade deadline, so cap space wasn’t really an issue for the 32nd overall team in the standings. At least not this year.
But a salary cap detail is going to punish the Canadiens a bit next season.
The Habs had four players earn salary bonuses this season and since the team had no cap space to include it in the 2021-22 season payroll, that cap hit will be added to next season’s cap hit.
Jordan Harris is playing in his 10th game tonight resulting in him earning $82,500 in Games Played bonuses.
— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) April 30, 2022
That brings the #Habs Perf. Bonus total to $1,132,500 which will be applied as an overage penalty next season.
Suzuki $537.5k
Caufield $300k
Romanov $212.5k
Harris $82.5k
Nick Suzuki earned $537,000. Cole Caufield earned a bonus of $300,000. Alexander Romanov reached a bonus of $212,500 and Jordan Harris was given an $82,500 bonus.
Combined, that is a cap hit of $1,132,500 that will be applied to next year’s cap. Essentially, that means the Habs are working with a cap of $81,367,500 while everyone else has a cap of $82.5 million next season.
The Habs will have to decide this offseason whether they are going to try and contend next season or admit to the fact the team won’t be good enough. If they try to get better, they will be doing so while working with a few less dollars than anyone else.
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