Montreal Canadiens: Can Habs Find Cap Space To Keep Carey Price Off LTIR?

The Montreal Canadiens have made a few offseason moves, but it has been a fairly quiet summer altogether.

They were a surprise addition in the Erik Karlsson trade talks between the Pittsburgh Penguins and San Jose Sharks. The Habs ended up adding Jeff Petry in that deal and moving Mike Hoffman and Rem Pitlick off the roster.

This actually saved them cap space, but they were also rewarded with a second round pick and prospect Nathan Legare from the Penguins for their troubles. Petry was then shipped to the Detroit Red Wings, but the Habs retained about $2.3 million of his salary for the upcoming season as well as 2024-25.

The Canadiens have also retained $1.75 million on Joel Edmundson’s contract and are still paying $833,333 on the buyout of Karl Alzner’s contract. They also, of course, have to deal with Carey Price’s $10.5 million contract knowing he is not going to play a game this season.

The contract can go on long term injured reserve (LTIR) and essentially allow the Habs to go $10.5 million over the cap. This is what the team did last season, but it does come with a few wrinkles. It does not give the team much flexibility in season to take on salary, and it also means all performance bonuses that are achieved get applied to the following season’s salary cap.

Which happened to the Canadiens last season. So, in addition to paying retained cap hits on Petry and Edmundson, and using cap space on Alzner’s buyout, the team is also being charged a cap penalty of $1.17 million. It isn’t a huge hindrance on a rebuilding team, but every penny counts when a team is trying to get better and compete.

It could happen again next year as the Canadiens have a total of $4.21 million in potential performance bonuses to pay out this season. If Price goes on LTIR and the team spends “over the cap” then those bonuses would be applied to the 2024-25 season’s cap total.

So, it would be ideal if the Habs could fit Price in under the salary cap to start the season, and allow themselves to be under the cap at season’s end so they have room for any performance bonuses that are reached.

But, can they do it? A quick glance at capfriendly.com shows them about $3.778 million over the salary cap with Price on the roster. That seems like too much to offload to make room, but a closer look shows that is with a total of 14 forwards, nine defenseman and three goaltenders (in addition to Price) on the roster.

Simply trimming the roster by sending down Michael Pezzetta, Justin Barron, Gustav Lindstrom and Casey Desmith gives enough cap space to add Price to the roster without going over the cap, with about $60,000 to spare.

That’s not a lot of wiggle room to work throughout the year and would make it really difficult to call anyone up. It also doesn’t even leave enough space to bring up Barron and send down a player like Chris Wideman, since Wideman makes about $200,000 less than Barron.

The Canadiens could look to trade Desmith to make more space, as he has a $1.8 million cap hit and even after being sent to the minors he still takes up $650,000 on the NHL team’s cap.

If the Habs can find a taker for Desmith, it would easily allow them to keep Price on the roster and make dealing with the salary cap so much easier throughout the 2023-24 season.

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