Random thought today. When does Kahkonen become a UFA? Is it July 1st or sometime in August?
The Wild are at 49/50 contract slots, right now. Is it even possible to sign both Greenway and Kahkonen without making other roster moves?
Well, Koivu is going to be 1.25 cheaper. Cullen (1.7), Stewart (1.15), Quincey (1.25) and Winnik (.660) come off, too. Finally, Vanek's buyout, mercifully, comes off the cap (2.5). Dumba and Zucker will need to be re-signed, probably earning raises of - and this is highly speculative and variable to change - $1.5 and $2.5 million respectively. So, that's $8.51 million freed up, and $4 million of that immediately eaten by Zucker and Dumba. If Olofsson can completely replace Quincey in the lineup, forcing either he or another lefty to play right defense (Brodin?), we can just fly Soucey around between Iowa and Minnesota when there are injuries, making his cap hit much smaller than the 0.925 it would be if he were up permanently. That leaves us only running 6 defensemen, which means if an injury happened during a back-to-back, we'd probably have to play with 5 sometimes, instead of the full lineup. So, pretending injuries never occur, which is highly unrealistic, we've got 8.51-4= 4.51 million to fill out the forwards with. We have 11 NHL forwards under contract next off-season (this counts Ferrero as the Winnik replacement, as they have nearly identical contracts).
$4.5 million is enough to sign both, especially since it's unlikely either one would be in the NHL full time, much less both of them. Stalock is still on contract next season, but he could be waived (he would need to be waived, right?) and sent to Iowa if Kahkonen can beat him out for a backup spot. Next season is going to be another tight cap season, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if my Zucker+Dumba estimate is low, which would give us less than that $4.5 million to work with. It's also enough room to sign another Quincey type of defender, and a lower end 4th line center. If we do that, we're probably sitting at around $2 million in space left. That's a lot more space than we have this season, but it's still not great, and may be prohibitive. And of course as I mentioned, if Zucker+Dumba eat up more like 3 million of it, we're right back in the same boat as this season.
All info I used for this was from capfriendly.com and nhlnumbers.com. I trust that their info is accurate, so any mistakes are probably due to my limited understanding of how cap hits work. I also did this math using a static, non changing NHL salary cap.
*edit* I just saw the news that Dumba has re-signed for 5.1 AAV. That is more than I anticipated. I had him at a $1.5 raise, and this raise is actually $2.55 (double his current deal). So of that $2 million I was guessing we would have, that estimate just went down to about $1 million, and may well go lower with Zucker's signing. Our 4th line next year may be composed of rookies and bottom of the barrel veterans.
