Six Salary Cap Agenda Items that will drive the action on NHL’s Deadline Day

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It’s the Final Countdown. Literally. After counting down for the last 60 days with at least one trade-focused story every day, we’ve finally made it to the precipice of Deadline Day.

2023 Trade Deadline Countdown: 1 Day

There is not a single decision, not a single idea conjured by front office members, not a single transaction made in the NHL without the salary cap in view.

This trade deadline, we’ve partnered with our brilliant friends at CapFriendly.com – hockey’s premier salary cap resource database – to arm our readers with the most insightful information possible.

With the help of CapFriendly, we’ve compiled six nuggets to be mindful of heading into Deadline Day, along with a final update of each team’s salary cap picture:

Maple Leafs Saving Space

One of the big questions floating through the hockey world on Thursday: Are the Leafs done? GM Kyle Dubas has changed out one third of the team’s skaters over the last two weeks, adding Ryan O’Reilly, Noel Acciari, Jake McCabe, Sam Lafferty, Luke Schenn and Erik Gustafsson. They’ve subtracted Pierre Engvall, Rasmus Sandin and Joey Anderson.

On paper, according to CapFriendly, the Leafs could take on a full cap hit of $4.77 million on Friday.

But that number is not what it appears. From that number, the Leafs must reserve $4.69 million to activate goaltender Matt Murray from the long-term injury list (LTIR).

Once that happens, the Leafs could send down extra netminder Joe Woll, netting them an exact total of $850,000. That is the amount of money left over for Univ. of Minnesota star Matt Knies, who is expected to join the team once his season ends with the Golden Gophers, to earn as a cap hit on his entry-level contract.

The Maple Leafs are currently carrying nine bonafide NHL defensemen. Many believe that is one too many, even though rosters expand on Deadline Day and Toronto can exceed 23 players.

Point being: If Toronto is to add on Friday, possibly to better balance out the roster with a forward, then the odd-man out might be pending UFA defenseman Justin Holl. His $2 million cap hit is one of the only ways to create cap flexibility. The smart money is not on the Leafs adding an insurance goaltender as they seem pretty comfortable with Ilya Samsonov, Murray and Woll if need be.

Barely Enough for a Steak Dinner

Those cap space figures below for both the Edmonton Oilers ($0) and New York Rangers ($7,083) are not typos. Yes, the Oilers quite literally managed their $82.5 million budget down to the penny, not one dollar to spare.

We were wondering why they asked the Nashville Predators to retain an odd four percent of defenseman Mattias Ekholm’s four-year contract. It’s a strange number considering the low amount ($250,000) to keep for the next three seasons, which will chew up one of their three retained salary transaction slots for the next three seasons.

Turns out, the Oilers had Arizona’s Nick Bjugstad in mind – and had the Coyotes retain half ($450,000) of his $900,000 cap hit, which hit their number on the head.

We’ve all watched the Rangers’ cap wrangling in recent days leading up to the deadline. It took them four full days to accrue the requisite cap space to acquire Blackhawks icon Patrick Kane. They were forced to play short with 12 forwards and five defensemen in Kane’s debut on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden and now have a scant $7,083 in excess space on Friday. That’s a pretty solid indication that both the Oilers and Rangers have already completed their shopping.

Completing the Domi Deal

The Dallas Stars agreed in principle to a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday afternoon for forward Max Domi. The Blackhawks will take on goaltender Anton Khubodin’s contract and get back a second-round pick in return.

Even though the Stars and Hawks squared off at United Center on Thursday night, the deal couldn’t be completed in time before the game because of salary cap complications. Just taking on Khudobin’s deal (he was parked in AHL Texas) wasn’t enough to make Dallas compliant in time for Domi to talk down the hallway and face his former team on his 28th birthday.

The Stars had three players on emergency recall on Thursday. They couldn’t send down goalie Matt Murray (the other Matt Murray) because he made his first career NHL start in Chicago. They sent all three players back down to AHL Texas after the game on Thursday night, including the two Fredriks (Fredrik Olofsson and Fredrik Karlstrom), which gave them enough room to complete the trade.

The Power of Retained Salary

We let you know heading into the deadline that this could be called the Year of the Third-Party Broker. There were six trades in NHL history prior to this year that required a third team to wash cap space and retain money in order to process a trade. There have been three in this month alone: Ryan O’Reilly to Toronto, Dmitry Orlov to Boston and Patrick Kane to New York. There may be yet another one on Friday if James van Riemsdyk’s $7 million requires a little massaging on its way out of Philadelphia.

Retaining salary has always been important to make NHL transactions work, but never to the extent its been this deadline season. It’s been utilized 13 times alone in the two weeks since Feb. 17.

Each team is allowed to retain salary on a maximum of three contracts at any one time; that money stays on the team’s books as “dead space” for the duration of the contract. The Arizona Coyotes are now one of the few teams in NHL history to ever use the maximum three retained slots at once; the Montreal Canadiens did it last season with Ben Chiarot, Brett Kulak and Artturi Lehkonen.

That means Coyotes will not be involved in brokering any deals as a third-party on Friday. They’re all booked up. Seven other teams have used two and only have one spot left on the bingo card: Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Minnesota, San Jose, St. Louis and Washington. If the Sharks retained money on Friday morning’s early trade for Nick Bonino, then they will also be out of slots.

Other teams that may be involved in the third-party broker game on Friday: Anaheim, Montreal and Vancouver.

What are the Coyotes Cooking Up?

In the last week, the Arizona Coyotes have acquired the contracts of two injured players who are not expected to resume their careers. They’ve traded for Shea Weber’s $7.857 million cap hit and Jakub Voracek’s $8.25 million cap hit.

The bulk of both those contracts are covered by insurance, so there isn’t a large cash expenditure for Arizona’s books. And they both help Arizona artificially get to the NHL’s salary cap floor for next season. But what was their reason for trading for them now?

The answer may be in that it gives Arizona increased flexibility to move players this season and not risk falling below the $62 million floor. Nick Schmaltz ($5.85 million) and Lawson Crouse ($4.3 million) have both seen their names pop up in rumors in recent weeks. Crouse was especially surprising as he’s in the first year of his deal, but Schmaltz was signed by the previous regime. Both players could bring back a haul in return.

By the way, the move was a no-brainer for Columbus to trade Voracek’s contract on Thursday. His deal will provide important cap space to insure that the Blue Jackets’ final accounting number will be below the cap, so they’ll have plenty of room to pay out performance bonuses due to Kent Johnson, Cole Sillinger and Kirill Marchenko without having to worry about overages onto next season’s cap. The Blue Jackets were also believed to be sniffing around on Philadelphia’s Kevin Hayes in recent days, but that is a transaction that might wait until the offseason anyway.

The Case of J.T. Miller

At this point, it seems like a real long shot that the Vancouver Canucks will move forward J.T. Miller prior to Friday afternoon’s deadline. Miller’s name has surfaced in trade talks, but the Canucks wanted to secure a young center as a replacement before considering moving him. They were also asking for two first-round picks in return for Miller – or a first and a prospect.

Miller’s 7-year, $56 million contract extension kicks in on July 1. His ‘no-trade’ clause kicks in that day, too, making time of the essence this offseason if Vancouver actually does want to move on before losing some control in the matter.

If Miller does somehow end up moving before 3 o’clock on Friday, do not expect Vancouver to retain salary on him. Even though Miller is in the final season of his contract with a $5.25 million cap hit, if the Canucks were to retain on that, the same percentage retained would also carry over to the next contract as well. That would be unpalatable in Vancouver as they’re still looking to create cap flexibility that they crave.

Break Glass in Case of Emergency

We’re not expecting any big deal for the Calgary Flames on Friday, who dropped what many believed to be an important trade deadline indicator to the Maple Leafs on Thursday night.

The Flames have accrued $3.4 million in salary cap space this season, so they have some flexibility to make it work if they were targeting an acquisition. They can also create even more if need be. Sources indicated there is a mechanism available for the Flames to designate defenseman Oliver Kylington’s $2.5 million to LTIR and bump that number up to effectively $5.9 million. Kylington, 25, has remained in his native Sweden all season dealing with a personal matter and the Flames have carried his full cap hit on their books the entire year to this point. Kylington has one more season left on his contract.

Deadline Day Salary Cap Space

How much in face value contract each NHL team can trade for on Friday without moving another contract or retained salary: [as of Thurs. March 2, 11:30 p.m. ET]

Team	Deadline Cap Space
Anaheim Ducks	$60,201,705
Arizona Coyotes	$67,711,396
Boston Bruins	$2,860,833
Buffalo Sabres	$78,168,909
Calgary Flames	$3,411,748
Carolina Hurricanes	$2,606,667
Chicago Blackhawks	$23,423,229
Colorado Avalanche	$2,792,500
Columbus Blue Jackets	$21,070,833
Dallas Stars	$548,415
Detroit Red Wings	$33,321,103
Edmonton Oilers	$0
Florida Panthers	$137,625
Los Angeles Kings	$6,234,707
Minnesota Wild	$7,428,265
Montreal Canadiens	$4,138,334
Nashville Predators	$18,465,727
New Jersey Devils	$2,110,834
New York Islanders	$6,113,281
New York Rangers	$7,083
Ottawa Senators	$16,210,960
Philadelphia Flyers	$2,879,959
Pittsburgh Penguins	$401,217
San Jose Sharks	$2,444,167
Seattle Kraken	$3,950,975
St. Louis Blues	$6,539,741
Tampa Bay Lightning	$1,269,967
Toronto Maple Leafs	$4,770,833
Vancouver Canucks	$3,744,583
Vegas Golden Knights	$2,916,666
Washington Capitals	$7,327,950
Winnipeg Jets	$4,634,382

Courtesy of CapFriendly.com

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