Salary Cap Likely To Drop Next Two Years

[DA_Champion]

yes, we have lots of flexibility this offseason, that's been established.

What no one has explained to me yet when saying we're in good shape is how on earth we won't be in a mess the summer of 2010? Unless all these re-signings you speak of are one year deals (unlikely) we will have too many contracts that don't expire in the summer of 2010, whether they are 2 year deals or 10 year deals is almost irrelevant: the cap dropping in 2010 spells trouble.

Graeme, let me rephrase your question and you can tell me if I understand your concern,

You're worried that if the Habs sign a whole bunch of free agents next summer (as they must) in a 55 million dollar cap environment, they will be screwed the following year (and potentially several seasons) when it's a 48 million cap environment. I'll add in that this is doubly worse as I believe that 48 million is the year Price gets his first real contract.

It's a valid concern, which is why out of (Kovalev, Tanguay, Koivu, Lang) I see the habs signing only 2 of the 4 players, whereas before I was hoping for 3.

They basically have two choices:

1) Play below the cap next year, and pick up whatever tablescrap of an aging veteran they can at a 1 year contract.

2) Sign the players to good long-term deals next year, and then once the cap drops for 2010-2011 they can have a firesale before the season to get below the cap and sign Price.

It will most likely be option number 1 in my opinion. The potential for a winning season will still be here as we'll maintain a strong nucleus and Hamilton is one of the best teams in the AHL. Every single team in the NHL will face a similar choice, I guess the luckiest ones are the ones who have their best players contracts expire after 2009-2010, but the least lucky ones are those with many players with huge long-term contracts (Like Chicago, Buffalo and Tampa Bay). Given those possible situations I think ours is pretty good.

You mention "2009 values" in another post, but I think every GM in the league will be aware of the upcoming situation and there will be no retard contracts like the 12 years, 100 million that was offered to Marian Hossa. If there are such contracts it will work to the Habs advantage, as those teams will be knocking themselves out of competitiveness... they will also lower the salaries of other players on their team, and potentially leading to a cheap pickup off waivers in following years.

*******

Heck, maybe Kovalev would come back for a one year contract if it was inflated... which we could afford under the scenario I outline. Inflated as in his salary this year plus most of Lang's salary. Lang's 4 million will be most likely replaced by Ben Maxwell at $850, 000.

[tmash]

Graeme, let me rephrase your question and you can tell me if I understand your concern,

You're worried that if the Habs sign a whole bunch of free agents next summer (as they must) in a 55 million dollar cap environment, they will be screwed the following year (and potentially several seasons) when it's a 48 million cap environment. I'll add in that this is doubly worse as I believe that 48 million is the year Price gets his first real contract.

It's a valid concern, which is why out of (Kovalev, Tanguay, Koivu, Lang) I see the habs signing only 2 of the 4 players, whereas before I was hoping for 3.

They basically have two choices:

1) Play below the cap next year, and pick up whatever tablescrap of an aging veteran they can at a 1 year contract.

2) Sign the players to good long-term deals next year, and then once the cap drops for 2010-2011 they can have a firesale before the season to get below the cap and sign Price.

Yes, that's exactly my concern. Option number 1 is obviously realistic, and at least all the UFAs does give us this option (which other teams don't have). But option number 2 seems like not much of an option since if the cap drops too many teams will be trying to unload salary and no one will be willing to take it on (I suppose we could send guys to the minors if we had to).

The question is, could we ice a team at signficantly below the salary cap and still compete? I'm not so sure.

I guess the luckiest ones are the ones who have their best players contracts expire after 2009-2010, but the least lucky ones are those with many players with huge long-term contracts (Like Chicago, Buffalo and Tampa Bay). Given those possible situations I think ours is pretty good.

Well the luckiest ones will be whoever has the most contracts expiring the year the cap bottoms out and spends to the cap the next year (whether or not that's the summer of 2010 remains to be seen). The smartest ones on the other hand would be GMs with a roughly equal amount of salary being freed up every summer, since this hedges most realistic scenarios with the cap dropping (very few teams are actually in this situation though).

The teams with many players on long term deals are probably in the worst shape, I agree, as they don't even have the option of purposely staying well below the cap for future flexibility and will be paying players way above their signed value.

As hard as it would be to watch as a fan, one option would be to go with a youth movement again next season, don't re-sign many of our UFAs, and wait until the summer of 2010 when we could probably get some very good bargains (and if the economic predictions are correct, the cap would rise steadily after that).

You mention "2009 values" in another post, but I think every GM in the league will be aware of the upcoming situation and there will be no retard contracts like the 12 years, 100 million that was offered to Marian Hossa. If there are such contracts it will work to the Habs advantage, as those teams will be knocking themselves out of competitiveness... they will also lower the salaries of other players on their team, and potentially leading to a cheap pickup off waivers in following years.

You give the GMs too much credit You're right that if GMs are smart they will all act as if the salary cap is $50 million even if it's $58 to prepare for the next summer, but I'm afraid short term thinking will prevail and most teams will spend all they can under the cap.

Heck, maybe Kovalev would come back for a one year contract if it was inflated... which we could afford under the scenario I outline. Inflated as in his salary this year plus most of Lang's salary. Lang's 4 million will be most likely replaced by Ben Maxwell at $850, 000.

That's one possibility. Rather than spending below the cap, spend to the cap with inflated one year deals Of course, in a sense you're still lowering your salary cap since you have multiple salaries that are highly inflated, but it may be preferable to just leaving the cap space empty from a hockey perspective.

[CareyPrice31]

You know what? I hope the salary cap does drop for the next two years. It will teach all of those silly G.M.s who signed the dumbest contracts in the history of hockey a lesson and Gainey will be laughing because he has a ton of flexibility going into next season.

It was also, hopefully for us, force players to sign for less money than they would have if the cap increased again. If Gaborik thinks he's getting as much money as Malkin or Crosby he had better think again.

Especially if he's always hurt. :S

[proctowow]

Komisareck is an UFA next year, he may choose to sign elsewhere

As for replacing those players with the " ton of guys in Hamilton " ......yea we could , but then we might be even worse than we are this year

The ton of guys in Hamilton have no experience

Don't know if this fits in this thread but Kovalev to Pittsburgh for Sykora plus draft picks. Habs reduce cap by 2 million.

[shield4life]

I think it would scale down. I mean if a player we're to get max of 10 million this year due to a 57 million a year then if the cap goes down to assuming 48 million the max for a player would be down again to 8 million. So basically a player wouldn't be allowed to get paid more then 8 million. Now I don't think the team will just trade the player away nor buy him out. I'm sure theirs a catch to it that we're not aware.