TL;DR - I feel like the tweet in OP hinted at significantly ominous clouds. But am I doing the following correctly? It basically says NYR are a little tight, but overall OK. Am I on the right track?
(Sorry for the wall of text and manual nerd processing of the situation)
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Count down from $81.5 MM (Confusing as hell)
Typically a team has a cap upper limit. In this case it's 81.5 MM. Bonuses up to 7.5% (6.1 MM) don't affect that upper limit or cap hit, but are real cash to the players on ELC earning those bonuses?
The moment that you exceed a potential bonus of 7.5% (not earned, but potential), it erodes your upper limit.
New York Rangers - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps
Per this, there's 7.2 MM in bonuses for roster players. Rangers expecting to add another 2.85 in bonuses for 1OA = 10.1 ish. 3 non roster have a 850K bonus structure. Assuming worst case scenario of the 4 ELC players added to the roster with highest bonuses (850 + 850 +850 + 500), Total bonus = 13.112 MM bonuses = 7.013 bonus overage.
This overage effectively means the NYR ceiling goes from 81.5 to 74.5. Which already sucks, but they also have dead cap of non-roster players of $12.994 MM in 2020-2021 ($4.044 MM in 2021-2022) which means an effective roster cap of $61.5 MM.
New York Rangers - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps
So with 61.5 ceiling to technically use on a full roster, they currently are sitting at $45.5MM of contracts. This means $16.0 MM remain and they still need to add, 1G, 2D, 5F worth of players and those on ELC have a cap hit higher of $925K or more?
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Count up towards $81.5 MM (Easier to understand)
- NYR currently has 8 forwards under contract, 4 dmen under contract and 1G under contract with cap hits of $44.5 MM.
- They have $13 MM in dead cap = $57.5
- They have performance bonuses overage for 2020-2021 of $1.1 MM of current roster players that are expected to play = $58.6MM
- They need to add 5 forwards, 3 dmen and 1G.
Play along conservative minimums
5 Forwards
- 1st OA: Effective cap hit due to bonuses = $2.85 MM + $925K ELC = $3.8 MM Cap hit = $62.4
- Barron: ECH: $850K + $925K = $1.8 MM = $64.2MM
- Kravstov: ECH: $850K + $925K = $1.8 MM = $66.0 MM
- Andersson: ECH: $850K + $895K = $1.8MM = $67.8 MM
- Richards: ECH: $500K + $925K = 1.4MM = $69.2 MM
3 Dmen
- Miller: ECH: $925K + $300K = $1.3 MM = $70.5 MM
- Rykov: ECH: $925K + $0 = $925K = $71.4 MM
- Reunanen: ECH: $809K + $133K = $942K = $72.3 MM
1G
- N/A for a sec.
This means that with the above players slotted in, rangers are at $72.3 MM ($9.2 MM remain)
- Assume $4MM for goalie? (Georgiev or someone else) = $76.3 MM ($5.2MM remain)
- Roster is now full. Remainder of non-roster players stay non-roster (minor leagues etc.)
NYR now have confusion about what to do about Georgiev (kept at $4 MM or whatever, traded and another goalie at $4MM), ADA, Guiseppe and Strome.
No one talking about Guiseppe so let's say he's gone. There's $5.2MM remaining, so let's say we allocate $2.6MM for each of Strome and ADA. To slot them in, we pull off an ELC with effective cap hit.
- Strome max ish = $2.6 MM + ECH 1.8 MM of player sent down = $4.4MM? (Previous $3.1MM cap hit)
- ADA max ish = $2.6 MM + $940K = $3.5 MM? (Previous $925K ELC)
- $5.2MM + 1.8 MM ECH forward + $940K ECH dman = $7.9 MM cap space to upgrade two ELC either with ADA + Strome or other combos.
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Am I doing this wrong because when counting up, it seems like NYR isn't doing bad at all it's something to be aware but not terrifying yet as the tweet implied. The worst case scenario is choosing one of ADA and Strome to ripped off on but it's not horrific. I mean, in theory you could bury an ELC and sign a vet at league minimum to boost more cap available for ADA and Strome.
Additionally, in 2021-2022 season, the dead cap space is reduced by $8.9 MM (and they also lose a piece to Seattle) which obviously gives NYR a huge, huge bit of breathing room.
NYR are doing OK and not technically in Cap hell just icing a roster, right?
Albeit, even when Chicago was in Cap hell, I don't think they ran as many ELC on the roster... But NYR are rebuilding vs contending, so it's not technically cap hell?
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But when counting down, it's confusing as hell and it seems like it's ridiculously tight because of the moving remaining cap due to the cap cushion thing. I think it's easier to take ELC players and look at them as effective cap hit.