Right. But the team is going to want to spend to be competitive immediately as well. I think Vegas pretty much changed expectations for how expansion teams can be right away. Also, the way Burns looks after himself I totally expect him to be a 40+ point player till 38-39. And while I do think its going to be flat cap going into 2020-21, I expect it rises after that. Before we start thinking that we need to be enticed into taking Burns we need to watch how he produces next season. I think he can easily be a 60+ point player again and if the Sharks expose him, I think it would be hard for the Kraken to not want to take a bite.
Like I've said, I like Burns and wouldn't even mind him on the team(he's one of my favourite current players) but I doubt we'll be interested in his contract without the Sharks giving up something really valuable.
Also, I'd expect the cap to stay flat for some time.
The new CBA states that the cap will stay at $81.5 mil for the 2020-21 season and will stay at there until hockey related revenue returns to $4.8 billion.
Given the current situation we're in, the fact that we don't know at what point there'll be actually fans allowed back into arenas(very important part of income for NHL franchises) and that we're in one of the biggest economic crisis ever I doubt that the cap will go up any time soon or at least not much at all for some time.
BTW: Of course Vegas set the bar insanely high, but no one in Seattle expects that and most surveys have actually shown that Seattle hockey fans want a young and exciting team, with a couple of vets, that can grow and be(or become) competitive.
Also, no one expected Vegas to do what they did after people saw the players they got in their expansion draft.
So even though the media(and other fans) will compare and judge us on those merits, it's just not something we should bother about too much.
Especially since Vegas was able to catch teams on surprise given the short notice teams had(one year) to try and prepare their rosters for it.
I think, unfortunately for us, most players willing to waive clauses easily are the ones on bad contracts and underperforming. There may be some who are asked to waive simply because their teams are tight on cap space and have ELC's to take care of as well (like TBL). Those are the teams we need to target to get good players are decent contracts.
Yeah, it's going to be mostly players that are positive about us not being interested which will help teams protect other players we would be interested in.
Though, even then we should be able to grab a couple of good players and I'm even more interested what kind of deals Francis can pull off to add some picks or talents.