Much has been made in recent days about the 2015-2016 salary cap remaining the same, or close to this year’s cap number ($69,000,000}. While the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks are the frequent subjects of impending cap doom articles, the Lightning has received a fair share of mentions as well. This is silly, for a lot of reasons:
Improper capgeek Influence
The favorite website of pretty much every reporter and armchair GM is certainly playing a role here. The Lightning is one of six teams with $0 in projected cap space, thus many probably glance at this and assume the team is in cap trouble. However, the team’s $4.9 million in both daily and trade deadline cap space puts them at 17/30 and 10/30 in the league, respectively. Mattias Ohlund is not coming back, so disappearing LTIR space is not an issue either.
Next Year’s Roster is Quite Full
The very same capgeek,com projects the Lightning to have $5.5 million in cap space next season with 18 players signed. While you’d be correct in saying $1.1 million per player to fill up the roster is not much, there’s little chance that Eric Brewer ($3.875 million), Brenden Morrow ($1.55 million) and Evgeni Nabokov ($1.55 million) are replaced with players at a higher salary than theirs.
More Kids are Coming
We’ll probably be saying this every year of Steve Yzerman’s tenure. Using the three players above as an example, you could replace Brewer with Andrej Sustr and/or Mark Barberio (both RFA and not playing their way to big raises), Morrow with Adam Erne at $905,000 (I would say Cedric Paquette, but he’s already carving out a place for himself) and Nabokov with Kristers Gudlevskis at $608,333.
The last point is really what it’s all about. The cap forces teams to be shrewd with every penny and there is always the chance a player could play themselves off of a cap-stricken team. Having a constant stream of young players that contribute on cheap, entry-level contracts is what enables team like the Lightning to spend more on top players and not have to pull a 2010 Blackhawks every offseason.
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