2024 NHL team salary cap rankings: #32-25
As the NHL calendar shifts to September and training camp gets closer to starting, it means the offseason is coming to an end and most of the roster movement is out of the way (more on that in a minute).
That means it’s time to officially kick off this season’s salary cap rankings at Daily Faceoff, in which we take a look at all the different aspects of managing and excelling in the salary cap era and rank teams based on how well they do. That’s all done through a somewhat complex process and system, which I have outlined in a summary of its own for your convenience.
While this portion of the list in past years has featured some rebuilding teams that are still navigating a salary cap hell that they inherited from previous eras, almost all of the teams featured in the back eight find themselves in disasters of their own creation. They’re far from unsolvable, but these teams certainly haven’t done themselves any favors with the situations they’ve put themselves in.
In past years, I’ve usually elected to lock the rankings based on all transactions that occurred prior to the release of the first part of the list. However, with several big name restricted free agents still waiting on new contracts, it didn’t feel like I’d be doing this list justice by not considering those should they be signed over the course of this list’s release. That means that I will be updating this list as we go along and retroactively making changes to previous articles when needed. Of course, I’ll make sure to keep you all in the loop when that happens.
32. Montreal Canadiens (2023: 24th)
Good Contract Percentage: t-30th (2023: 16th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-24th (2023: 19th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-9th (2023: 9th)
Dead Cap Space: 27th (2023: 27th)
Quality of Core: 32nd (2023: 28th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-21st (2023: 12th)
The Montreal Canadiens have made gambles on many players over the past few seasons, ones with high draft pedigree with the potential to extract their high upside. The problem is that they usually do so by giving them contracts that are closer to their ceiling than their current form, and that part has continued to not pay off. Kirby Dach, Alex Newhook, and Christian Dvorak were the best examples of that, and they all grade out as bad contracts this year.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg in Montreal though. On top of poorly aging veterans like Brendan Gallagher, David Savard and Joel Armia, their top stars also don’t grade out favorably based on the model I used. While Cole Caufield is getting closer to grading out as a good value contract, Nick Suzuki continues to be nowhere close to his contract (largely in part to getting a lot of empty-calorie points on the power play), and the newly added Patrick Laine makes their salary cap situation look even uglier with his significant overpay. Outside of Suzuki, no contracts are egregiously bad and locked in long term, but considering that the Habs are trying to take the next step in the rebuild, it’s going to be very hard to do that when they keep getting in their own way.
31. Pittsburgh Penguins (2023: 13th)
Good Contract Percentage: 25th (2023: 20th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-7th (2023: 1st)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-30th (2023: 30th)
Dead Cap Space: 24th (2023: 19th)
Quality of Core: 30th (2023: 19th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-19th (2023: 3rd)
Things have not gone well in Kyle Dubas’ first year or so at the helm of the Pittsburgh Penguins. In his defense, it wasn’t a good situation to begin with, and when your best players are in their final years, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but we haven’t exactly seen the best work from Dubas as well. Where they were really hurt was the fact that their core is starting to lose some certainty. Erik Karlsson has three years left on his deal, Evgeni Malkin has two years left on his, and Sidney Crosby is in the final year of his, leaving a core of Kris Letang (great!), Tristan Jarry (solid), Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Ryan Graves (okay, that’s bad).
On top of that, the roster has gotten worse. They moved on from Jake Guentzel and Reilly Smith, their veteran brigade is aging, and a lot of Dubas’ additions that he was hoping would give the team more depth just haven’t panned out as well as expected. As a result, this roster is much worse than last season’s despite still spending unjustifiably close to the salary cap. Dubas’ ability to find quality cheap deals is still among the best in the league, but he’s also quite guilty of handing out too many NTC/NMCs and has now allocated close to $3 million in cap space to retained salary. I know the plan was to try and get this group back to contention while Crosby is still around, but that hope just looks bleaker every year.
30. St Louis Blues (2023: 31st)
Good Contract Percentage: 29th (2023: 31st)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-24th (2023: 6th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-24th (2023: 25th)
Dead Cap Space: t-1st (2023: 7th)
Quality of Core: t-24th (2023: 31st)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-31st (2023: 32nd)
It’s not uncommon for teams that are still somewhat fresh off Stanley Cups win to find themselves in salary cap hell, and the St. Louis Blues are no exception. While not too many pieces remain from the team that won in 2019, the few that are still around are on horrid contracts, most notably Brayden Schenn and Colton Parayko. In fact, Parayko is part of a top four defense core in St. Louis that all have terrible contracts, as Justin Faulk, Torey Krug and Nick Leddy are all locked up for at least the next two seasons, with Parayko’s six seasons the most daunting to overcome.
The one part of the cap game the Blues are doing well in is a lack of dead cap space, but they may need to tap into that just to get out of their current nightmare. Too many aging pieces are locked up longer than they need to be, all while you have a younger group of Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas and Pavel Buchnevich getting paid as well. At the very least, they’re getting bold in terms of acquiring talent around those players, most notably with the offer sheets of the Edmonton Oilers’ Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, so maybe that’s a sign of things to come as their managerial transition from Doug Armstrong to Alex Steen occurs.
29. New York Islanders (2023: 26th)
Good Contract Percentage: t-19th (2023: 26th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-31st (2023: 19th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: 32nd (2023: 25th)
Dead Cap Space: t-1st (2023: 1st)
Quality of Core: t-20th (2023: 13th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-27th (2023: 29th)
It’s not a salary cap ranking without the New York Islanders down in the bottom quarter of the list. With hockey’s top dinosaur in Lou Lamoriello still at the helm of the team, the Islanders continue to pedal out the same mediocre roster year after year with minimal changes, although at least this year saw them avoid any reckless decisions with long-term ramifications (their only long-term contract, Anthony Duclair, actually grades out well by my model).
So why did they get worse? Well, it’s the natural progression of having one of the older rosters in the league, as the players Lamoriello locked up to long-term deals in the past (see Anders Lee, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Casey Cizikas) continue to age and take steps back, making the contracts that much worse. Add in the fact that Lamoriello is allergic to signing NHL-caliber players to less than $1 million and hands out NTC/NMCs like candy, and it makes a messy cap situation that is tough to wiggle out of.
28. Detroit Red Wings (2023: 30th)
Good Contract Percentage: t-30th (2023: 24th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-24th (2023: 9th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-24th (2023: 28th)
Dead Cap Space: 14th (2023: 24th)
Quality of Core: t-26th (2023: 20th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: 12th (2023: 21st)
The Detroit Red Wings are a team whose ranking should be taken with a massive grain of salt. The fact they have yet to sign two of their biggest young stars in Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider means that they could very well not finish in this spot by the time we publish the full list. Whether that will see them improve or get worse remains to be seen, but for now, let’s look at what they do have.
The biggest issue with the Red Wings is their continued desire to block their young talent by signing veterans to fill up their cap space. Admittedly, all three of their big veteran adds in Vladimir Tarasenko, Erik Gustafsson and Cam Talbot all grade out as good deals, but the pre-existing deals like Andrew Copp, J.T. Compher, Ben Chiarot and Justin Holl meant they already had no room to add more without getting in the way of their talent. The team has certainly improved, but they have a salary cap picture that looks daunting to navigate going forward, which is almost impressive considering how well Steve Yzerman did cleaning up the previous mess left by Ken Holland.
27. Los Angeles Kings (2023: 21st)
Good Contract Percentage: 17th (2023: 10th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-11th (2023: 9th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-20th (2023: 14th)
Dead Cap Space: 26th (2023: 20th)
Quality of Core: 28th (2023: 23rd)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-27th (2023: 30th)
For a brief moment in time, the Los Angeles Kings were one of the more interesting up-and-coming teams. They had plenty of high-end prospects, and also boasted an extremely talented back end, setting themselves up for contention for years to come. They thought they were getting the final piece of the puzzle in a talented top-line center in Pierre Luc-Dubois, but they were lucky to get out of that deal mostly unscathed this summer.
Unfortunately, it’s left the team a little bit depleted. Only Quinton Byfield has really begun to look like the player he was drafted to be, and only Mikey Anderson remains of that talented blueline behind Drew Doughty, although Brandt Clarke still has plenty of time to break out. Patching up their blueline left them handing out bad contracts like Joel Edmundson’s, and while the Kings have otherwise been diligent with their contracts post-Dubois, they still lack the core to return to their Stanley Cup-contending status from 10 years ago, even though they have a lot of it locked up.
26. Minnesota Wild (2023: 16th)
Good Contract Percentage: t-9th (2023: 4th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-11th (2023: 19th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: 29th (2023: 17th)
Dead Cap Space: 32nd (2023: 32nd)
Quality of Core: 29th (2023: 7th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-16th (2023: 19th)
In the three years that I’ve done these rankings for Daily Faceoff, this is the lowest that the Minnesota Wild have ranked. It’s impressive that it has taken this long to rank this low considering that they’ve always been in last for dead cap space by default thanks to the buyout cap hits of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. They’ve generally been good at building a solid cap picture around that massive deficit, but last year saw the team finally pay the price for it and miss out on a playoff spot, and now they find themselves looking a lot worse in terms of their salary cap.
The biggest issue is all of the long-term contracts that they’ve been giving out to players who don’t need them. Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek and Brock Faber are all deserving of their deals, but do players as mediocre as Yakov Trenin or Jake Middleton, or as old as Marcus Foligno and Frederick Gaudreau need them? Sure, the Wild have the space beyond this season with those buyout cap hits finally dropping to $833,333 each in 2025-26, but there are better ways to allocate your cap space when you have the room. The Wild may have been efficient with the buyout penalties on their hands in the past, but maybe they needed that added pressure to be better at other facets of managing their salary cap.
25. Seattle Kraken (2023: 14th)
Good Contract Percentage: t-19th (2023: 13th)
Quality Cheap Deals: t-7th (2023: 25th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: t-30th (2023: 31st)
Dead Cap Space: t-1st (2023: 9th)
Quality of Core: 31st (2023: 12th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: t-31st (2023: 4th)
The Seattle Kraken have certainly seen better days in terms of their salary cap. They found success relying on a really deep roster even without the star talent, and the past year has seen them hand out their biggest cap hits so far in their franchise’s brief history. The problem is that none of them is worth it. I highlighted Chandler Stephenson and Brandon Montour as two of the worst contracts handed out in free agency this offseason, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that my model agrees with that, while massive steps back this season from Matty Beniers and Vince Dunn have made their $7+ million cap hits look a bit too pricey.
In fact, it’s only Beniers, Stephenson and Montour that make up their long-term core, and while Beniers has the upside, I wouldn’t want to rely on the latter two as franchise centerpieces. They still have some good contracts in the system, like Jared McCann, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Jordan Eberle and Joey Daccord, and they have plenty of young talent on cheaper deals like Shane Wright and Tye Kartye to insert around some of these new deals, but a middling roster that is littered with NTC/NMCs means that at this time, they’ll be in a tough position to improve the team without being crafty.
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