smackdaddy
x – Edmonton
I found this over on the business board. I have to say, the projections are a little over the top. But let's say that the cap does follow this trend. We're looking at an $80M cap in 2 years.
Luckily, we have guaranteed our team remains competitive as we push $90-$110M within the next 10 years with the arena that's being built. Winnipeg, among others, are a team that could very well suffer the same fate it did 20 odd years ago if they cannot make the $70-80M cap floor. But that's a diff topic.
The question is, should this team anticipate the cap hike and trade for/sign players accordingly? If we manage to lock up our top 5 talents to around $35M, that leaves us with $45M in cap space in 2 years under an $80M cap. Pittsburgh will be rolling with $34.65 for 5 players in 2014-2015. That would make it 46% of their cap in 5 players (estimated; $75M cap for 2014-2015). We know it's doable.
If we are truly ready to compete with the big markets in terms of salary, we should be looking to grab those players we need aggressively. Despite the fact that Clarkson is a glorified grinder, the more I look at the reasoning in which Nonis justified the contract, the more I believe it to be more forward thinking than this short-sighted 2-year foresight most managers post-2004 seem to be caught up in. They got their man and that's all there really is to it. The cap implications are non-existent. His cap hit will be a fart in the wind for a team as rich as Toronto in 2 years. The length, however....
It is a shame it took so long for us to get this arena project going, because it has put us into a very crappy scenario in terms of the revenue/salary ratio we have to live by until the financial situation of the Oilers/Katz stabilizes. Quite frankly, the reason we seem to be unable to attract FAs seems to be our historic desire to buy low (Clarkson notwithstanding), or be thrifty. It's an economic reality for Canadian teams.
Setting our sights on a projected salary cap of $80M by 2015 and gambling on that fact is a risk I believe the Oilers should take. As contrary as it sounds today, we need more signings of the Boyd Gordon variety - where we pay a premium for an asset we desperately need. This BS with Gagner is upsetting me. $5M for a center is the high rate right now and takes no consideration for the cap rising for the duration of his contract. We should look at it as a percentile rather than raw dollar figure, and the reality of the fact is every players' cap percentile is going to go down over the next 5 years guaranteed. Nickle and diming Gagner over what amounts to a NTC and $0.500M is ludicrous. It's not about dollars, it's about whether or not we see Gagner a core member of this team. If not, trade him. It's pretty simple stuff.
I believe we should start being a forward thinking team and that starts with bold moves like trading for high end players like Vanek, taking premium cap dumps from top teams today, and signing the FAs we need to the contracts that make sense 2 years from now rather than today. If we go into this important phase of our rebuild and plug in a bunch of crappy thrift store NHLers, the rate in which those players turn into true gems and those who don't are never as high as signing the premium player to begin with.
That being said, I'd be interested in hearing how your strategy moving forward changes and who you'd target today if we embraced the fact that we would be a cap team with 80M in payroll in 2 years.