So, with the trade deadline only 48 days away, I think it's worth a quick glance at just how the Rangers are looking in terms of salary cap, after the Wolski trade and all these injuries. Recall that the salary cap for this season is set at $59.4 million. And so, away we go.
We will start with goalies, as they are always the easy one. Lundqvist makes $6.875m against the cap, Biron $875,000, for a total of $7.75 million against the cap. Done.
Now let's talk about defensemen. Right now, there are 6 on the roster: Staal ($3.975m), Girardi ($3.325m), Gilroy ($1.75m), McDonagh ($1.3m, of which $425,000 is bonuses), Eminger ($1.125m), and Sauer ($500,000). It's clear that at some point, Del Zotto ($1,087,500, of which $212,500 is bonuses) will be thrown back into that mix, probably replacing McDonagh. But for the sake of calculations, let's keep all 7 on our roster. That brings us to $13,062,500, of which $637,500 is bonuses. Recall that you can theoretically go over the cap by a performance-based bonus, but you probably don't want to - more on this later.
2 goalies and 7 defensemen leaves open 14 roster spots for forwards, not counting any that may be on Injured Reserve (more on this later, as well). Let's start with the simple ones: there are 10 forwards that are currently healthy and that we expect to be in the lineup nightly even when everyone is healthy. Those are: Gaborik ($7.5m), Drury ($7.05m), Wolksi ($3.8m), Avery ($1,937,500), Dubinsky ($1.85m), Fedotenko ($1m), Stepan ($875,000, of which $162,500 is bonuses), Anisimov ($821,667), Prust ($0.8m), and Boyle ($525,000). These 10 total another $26,159,167, of which $162,500 is bonuses.
Now, we've actually got 8 other forwards to talk about: 3 that are on IR but will return, 2 that are on IR but won't (I assume), and 3 that are called up in the interim here, whose futures are uncertain. Let's start by talking about those call-ups: Zuccarello ($1.75m, of which $0.85m is bonuses), Weise ($0.7m, of which $155,000 is bonuses), and Newbury ($512,500). Those all count against the cap as long as they're on the roster. Then there are Callahan ($2.3m), Boogaard ($1,625,000), and Christensen ($925,000), who are all on IR but will likely return at some point. Finally, we have Frolov ($3m), who is definitely out for the season, and Prospal ($2.48m, of which $1.4m is bonuses), who, like "Spiderman: Turn off the Dark," has a release date that keeps getting pushed back so much I have trouble believing he will ever actually play.
Obviously, no one is trying to count all 18 of those forwards against our cap. And I'll explain exactly how that works. But first let's add them all up and just see what happens. For these 27 players, the total cap hit is $60,264,167. $864,167 over the cap, 4 players over the maximum roster. So, we don't have any cap troubles. But, realistically speaking, how much room do we have to spare?
Let's start by assuming that Callahan, Boogaard, and Christensen all end up healthy again one day. That means that the 4 healthy roster spots left are distributed among the 3 of them, Zuccarello, Weise, and Newbury. Which really means that spots go to 3 of Boogaard, Christensen, Zuccarello, and Weise. Let's assume Weise gets the final cut, since he's the cheapest. There's $1,212,500 back, and we have the maximum roster size (since Frolov and Prospal are on LTIR, and we have 23 others). We have $348,333 to spend under the cap.
Now let's talk about cap credits. Even if Callahan, Boogaard, and Christensen are back, we've got two guys on LTIR, which means we are allowed to compensate for their loss by bringing in players whose salaries (not cap hits) do not exceed the injured players' salaries (not cap hits). These "replacement players" would then not count against the cap. Frolov's salary is $3m, and Prospal's is $1.08m, so that gives us $4.08m in salary that we can spend in players that would not count against the cap. That's awesome.
But wait; there's more! You'll note that I made a note of performance-based bonuses throughout. We end up, in our total salary, including $3.05m in bonuses. When a contract includes a performance-based bonus, the team may exceed the cap by that bonus (up to 7.5% of the cap, or $4.455m). If the team does so, and the bonus ends up getting paid out, that amount is deducted from the following year's cap, so it's not best to do this. However, it's worth mentioning, in no small part because $1.4m of those bonuses come from Prospal! It's pretty clear that we're in no danger of those being paid out (we're assuming he's on LTIR all season), so those become dollars we can spend.
Finally, those other performance-based bonuses, though we should stay away from them, are money we could theoretically spend if we had to. All this adds up to $1,748,333 we can spend under the cap, $4.08m in salary we could go over the cap, and $1.65 in bonuses we could technically still go over that. That's $7,478,333 we can theoretically spend, even though we'd have a full 23-man roster (2 forwards and 1 defenseman not in the actual lineup). Assuming we were bringing in a player with that money (what else would we do with it?), we'd have to clear him a roster slot, which at the very minimum nets us another $875,000 for sending down McDonagh. If we needed the cap space, we could then send down our 2 spare forwards. Those would likely be Christensen and Boogaard, whose salaries total $2.55m.
This leaves us with a full roster plus $10,903,333 with which we could theoretically make a move. That is more than the salary or the cap hit of any player in the league. Even if you take out the $1.65m in bonuses that we really shouldn't spend, it's still over the salary of anyone except Ovechkin, and over the cap hit of anyone except Lecavalier or Luongo. And that's more or less what we've got to work with on top of our best 20-man roster, if we need it. In conclusion, we have all the room in the world. There is absolutely no one we can/should not pursue for cap reasons. And that is awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment