Would it not have made sense to acquire a top 4D in a trade last season after the loss of Methot? A top 4D that would have then come with a 4M-6M cap hit, thus putting us close to the cap?
Would it not have made sense to keep that 2nd round pick we burned in the Zibanejad trade (If) it is true that we gave it up as compensation for NYR to cover Brassard's signing bonus?
Not spending to the cap would still be somewhat of an issue going forward even if all of our bad contracts disappear. Karlsson @ 12, Duchene and Stone both @ 8, that's 28 million right there on three players. A typical middle of the road goalie tandem costs almost 6 million dollars in today's NHL (4.5-5 for a minimum wage starter, 1-1.5 for a backup), with a good one costing 8M+. Meet in the middle at 7 million, and all of a sudden we're at 35 million total for 5 members of a 23 player roster.
That leaves the Senators with 33 million to spend on 18 skaters. I guess if we're just going to trade everybody once their RFA years are up and they become stars, then sure we don't need to spend to the cap. Dzingel, Pageau, and Ceci are all 4M+ players when their current contracts expire. It's too early to say with Chabot, but if he becomes the superstar Dorion advertises him as, and we want to lock him up long term after his ELC, we're looking at 5M+ at least. We're still missing a top 4 defender that we badly need to add via UFA or trade or someone graduating internally. If we have to resort to a trade or UFA, that's another 4M+. Mike Hoffman makes almost 6M right now, and will potentially get 7M+ in 2 seasons when his current contract is up....so just to keep this team together and slightly improve on it, that's an additional 24 million on the high end for 5 key players. So now the Sens only have about 9 million left to pay 13 players....that means, on average all of those 13 players have to make about 692k...with league minimum being 650k and most prospects getting more than 692k, it's not really plausible.
So with a 68M budget, even if we had none of the bad money on the books, we couldn't keep all of our current key players once their current contracts run out. I'm all for not signing bad contracts just because a team has cap space, but I think it's asinine to say that a team not spending to the cap wouldn't be an issue. It's a major competitive disadvantage.
