Salary Cap: Leafs Should Be A Cap Team Next Year

[PuckMagi]

The OP has a good suggestion but it wont work with
how he wants it to.

At the deadline teams are looking to add players with low cap hits.
If we did give MSL 10M and retained 5M at the deadline the team
trading for him has to be able to absorb a cap hit of 2.5 to 3M.

When you pick up a player at the deadline, I think only about 1/4 or 1/5 of their salary counts towards the cap hit if you want to think of it that way because they're only there for a little bit of the season.

So you could have less then $2 mil in extra cap space at the start of the season... and by the deadline, you'll have enough room to add a $10 mil player with the Leafs retaining 50%... so in terms of cap space... the $10 mil player is basically like a $1 mil player in terms of cap hit if you pick them up at the deadline with 50% retained.

You can also do what Chicago did and have one of your players "injured" between the deadline and the playoffs... that fits everyone under the cap... then when the playoffs start, you bring your injured player back and you play way over the cap in the playoffs where cap hits don't matter anymore.

 

[Super Mega]

We should use it to take on cap dumps for assets like we did for some other assets.

This is the better and more realistic plan

 

[PuckMagi]

We should use it to take on cap dumps for assets like we did for some other assets.

We can do that too... but any extra cap space should be used to sign 1 year deals to UFAs.

And we also don't want to take on too many multi-year cap dumps because we'll still need room to sign someone like Stamkos. There are lots of good UFAs next off-season and we'll likely need a new franchise player if Kessel is traded.

 

[Ricky Bobby]

I don't disagree with the premise but I think it's far more likely we'll see things like the following:

-Take on a contract dump to gain assets (saw this with all of Lombardi, Kolzig, Brewer, Jokinen)

-Retain around 50% on a player with less than 3 years left on his deal (Lupul, Bozak, Polak, JVR, Komarov, Robidas) all fit into this category

-If we overpay someone on a 1 year deal it'll be more likely we overpay someone an extra 500K - 1 million for a depth piece like Winnik, Matthias, Richards, Glencross

-We get involved in a 3 way trade where we take on a player only to redeal him minutes later well retaining some of his cap hit and get compensated with something because of it. I.E. We acquire Sharp then take half his salary but gain a 1st because of it.

 

[Tak7]

Real lack of rational thought and common sense by the OP in this thread.

1 - Overpaid players just can't be flipped at the deadline; teams don't want that money on their books.

2 - We are already retaining salary on Gunnarsson. Add 2 more retentions on any 2 of Bozak / Lupul / Kessel / Phaneuf, meaning we won't be to retain on any of your overpaid "gems".

3 - The reason why Winnik, Santorelli, and Franson got moved at the deadline was because they were on good money deals.

4 - If you are the Leafs, and have a wealth of spending power, you want to leave yourself with some cap space so that you can take on a terrible contract at the deadline - a Horton, or a Savard, or a Pronger, or another bad contract that stays on the books. You want that cap flexibility, as a rebuilding team, so that you can say "hey, let us help ease your cap situation, but give us a young asset to help"

 

[PuckMagi]

Real lack of rational thought and common sense by the OP in this thread.

No. The optimal strategy for the Leafs is to spend whatever extra cap space we have on 1 year contracts. We should come close to hitting the cap from day 1 of the season.

1 - Overpaid players just can't be flipped at the deadline; teams don't want that money on their books.

Yes they can be easily flipped at the deadline if they're on 1 year contracts. Teams build up cap space throughout the year and can afford to take a big cap hit at the trade deadline because they only pay a fraction of their salary because they're only playing for a fraction of the regular season. The cap doesn't matter in the playoffs. If you look at the salary cap of a playoff team, they can be way over the cap if it's done properly.

2 - We are already retaining salary on Gunnarsson. Add 2 more retentions on any 2 of Bozak / Lupul / Kessel / Phaneuf, meaning we won't be to retain on any of your overpaid "gems".

First, the retention is not 100% necessary to make the plan work. It just makes things easier. And yes, retention space is valuable and we should not waste it. Bozak and Phaneuf don't need salary retained. Lupul should just stay with the team this year. And we should just take back a bad contract with Kessel. Retaining him for that long I think is really stupid. It's bad cap management and it also uses up a valuable retention spot for a very long time.

So we should still keep our 2 retention spots and use them on our biggest 1-year contract flips at the deadline. We can do this for the next year or two until we're actually a good team and ready to make a push.

3 - The reason why Winnik, Santorelli, and Franson got moved at the deadline was because they were on good money deals.

Not true. They got moved easily because their contracts expired at the end of the year. It's easy to make the money work with respect to deadline deals for the reasons I explained above. Other teams can also move out their bad 1 year contracts to make more cap room. Or one of their players can just get "injured" for the rest of the regular season.

4 - If you are the Leafs, and have a wealth of spending power, you want to leave yourself with some cap space so that you can take on a terrible contract at the deadline - a Horton, or a Savard, or a Pronger, or another bad contract that stays on the books. You want that cap flexibility, as a rebuilding team, so that you can say "hey, let us help ease your cap situation, but give us a young asset to help"

Signing players to 1 year contracts gives you plenty of flexibility to take multi-year bad contracts if that's what you want to do.

 

[Brewsky]

LOL this is such a NHL 16 move.

I remember doing that, signing Brad Richards to a $7M/1 year, Morrow $7M/1 year and Engelland to $6M/1 year contracts just to reach the floor.

 

[Mitchy]

LOL this is such a NHL 16 move.

I remember doing that, signing Brad Richards to a $7M/1 year, Morrow $7M/1 year and Engelland to $6M/1 year contracts just to reach the floor.

haha, I used to sign all the top free agents, just to flip them for some great returns.

 

[PuckMagi]

LOL this is such a NHL 16 move.

I remember doing that, signing Brad Richards to a $7M/1 year, Morrow $7M/1 year and Engelland to $6M/1 year contracts just to reach the floor.

Maybe it is an NHL 16 move... I donno. I don't really play those games.

All I know is that if we go into this season way under the cap, then someone's not doing their job. The capologist should be fired for being incompetent if we go into next season with lots of extra cap space.

 

[Pyrophorus]

All I ask is that the UFAs we sign are not the guys who were bought out.
These guys really can't play anymore, despite what Button said.

I think Cap should be saved, in case of as Mess says a young guy becomes available.

 

[namttebih]

Just put a mannequin in the back seat. Done.

My kids have never spent this much time in my car.

 

[I am I]

The 50 contract reserve list would like to join this conversation and say "Hi, remember me?"

So how many contract slots do we have open right now? I think we have 6? Don't we have some kids to sign? The newly drafted CHL guys will slide, not sure who else needs a reserve list slot.

The 23 man NHL roster also sends its regards. How many spots are open or filled with players that are waiver exempt? Maybe 3 or 4?

Plus trying to integrate the Marlies a few at a time... Leivo and Hyman might be able to crack the roster at forward and on D Percy, Erixon, Marincin and maybe Loov or Granberg are fighting for 1 spot. Unless we are willing to have one of them in the pressbox as a #7 but I'd prefer an older guy for that job (Robidas? That would open another spot, so 2 spots. But Gardiner or Rielly need to be the veteran on that pairing which isn't ideal. So 1 spot).

This whole idea sound like too much of a good thing is a Bad Thing(TM).