So, after Howden gets his arbitration settled and Dorofeyev signs, we should still have about 1.55-1.6 million for the 23rd player.
They could start the season with someone on IR (I'm sure someone with VGK or HSK will have something they could sit out the first 7 days with) and have a 24 man roster right up against the cap and bank that space for a deadline rental at half retained. If they have Lehner on LTIR they have to do this or they lose that space for the year.
If they have to buyout Lehner then we only have about 800k that will be taken up by someone on the HSK roster. I don't think we will have to judging by the lack of any news about it.
Or they could sign a winger with it. Not much left, I don't think they'd want Tatar back. The only thing that would be of any interest to me would be if Tarasenko wants to sign a cheap one year deal to boost his value and wait for the cap jump of likely 6 million. Toews would be interesting but I think he's going to retire.
If we can't get cheap Tarasenko then I'd rather hold with what we have and save the space for the deadline. We could get a double retention on up to a 6 million dollar player if we felt we needed it at the time.