If we sign Hall, then 2020-21 may be a slightly bad year from a roster building perspective. Raanta, Stepan, Grabner, Goligoski, Hjalmarsson, and Demers all come off the books after this upcoming season. I think that is something like $30 M tied up in those 6 players. Getting rid of 2 or 3 allows us to sign Hall, but we may be at slim pickings in the 20-21 season. But heading into the 21-22 season, we have:
Hall (I assume a $10 M AAV)
Kessel (last year at $6.8 M AAV)
Schmaltz ($5.85 M AAV)
Dvorak ($4.45 M AAV)
Crouse ($1.53 M AAV - RFA)
Keller ($7.15 M AAV)
Hayton ($.90 M AAV - RFA)
Ekman-Larsson ($8.25 M AAV)
Chychrun ($4.60 M AAV)
Soderstrom ($0.90 M AAV)
Kuemper ($4.50 M AAV)
Hill ($0.90 M AAV)
Garland is an RFA after the 20-21 season, so he will be a priority re-sign. Prior to signing Garland, we would be at about $54 M with 12 players signed. Garland won't be cheap, but that gets us to 13, and then if we have a Jenik and Maccelli both at the NHL level, that would put us at 15 with rookie contracts, so, the team would only have to pick up about 6-7 players with $20 M left to spend, and most of that is on lower line forwards or defensemen. We could grab Jamie Oleksiak and Erik Gubrandson for less than $8 M combined and maybe leave that other spot for Capobianco and a 6/7 call-up type. That doesn't even account for Hino or Fischer re-signing after this year on 2 year bridge deals, which would mean they would also be on very cheap deals to fill out the back half of the roster.
Bottom line is that the 20-21 season should be the only one where we could hypothetically take a step back, in terms of who we can afford to add. We would be subtracting some pieces, but a lot of this would be replacing parts that are just as good with cheaper, younger versions (Hayton in for Stepan, Soderstrom in for Demers, as examples). I think that once we are past the 20-21 season, we have a nice window where a lot of the old contracts are dropping off, which affords the ability to surround the right pieces and make the right decisions on other pieces. Is Schmaltz about capped on his return? Well, paying $5.5 M for a guy who gets you 50 points is actually a good deal for most teams, and not just the Coyotes. Leaves flexibility to make certain things work if we need to shift gears because Hayton and Jenik had "breakout" years or something like that.