These 10 players are at 58.3 mill next year
Mcdavid
Draisailt
Lucic
Hopkins
Kassian
Sekera
Klefbom
Larson
Russell
Talbot
Quick math tells us theres roughly 17 mill to sign 13 more players
Im going to predict 12 mill minimum for maroon/nurse/benning/strome.
Leaving around 5 for 9 more players
If hopkins is traded thats around 11 mill for 10 players... trust me this cap situation is bad and some money must be dealt.
Then next year talbot and puljarvi get new deals. Heaven help the oilers if puljarvi doesnt completely suck until then
I can do some quick math too. Here it is but be careful, I did this in my head so you may want to check it out.
I would say that there is a 50-50 chance that the cap goes over $80M next year. Had the $CDN been flat this year and had the NHLPA used the full escalator it would have been $78M which means a roughly 6.8% organic growth in revenue.
Take out the falling $CDN from the equation and that is not out of line with what we have seen even recently.
This year the $CDN is up enough to add $1M to the cap. The new Adidas contract is good for about $600k. To get to $80M organic growth excluding the Adidas deal would have to be 4.8% which historically would be on the low side.. At 6.8% you get to $82.7M and even if the NHLPA kills the escalator completely you are still over $81M.
So while a cap of $80-81M is optimistic it is also realistic. And from there signing the current roster is doable with bridges for Nurse, Benning and Cagguila with Maroon at $4M and Strome at around $3.75M. My numbers would be based on Strome, Maroon, Nurse and Benning getting about $12.5M total.
What will it take to make this happen? Probably just the $CDN remaining where it is or better plus the Canadian teams having roughly last year's success. Given the BoC's comments on tightening the former is a decent bet. We will see if the latter comes true.
2019-2020 would certainly be tight. But they have options if Benning and Nurse take steps forward.
So you can trust me that I understand the Oilers cap situation.