If you are not a CBA expert, you might not know there exists a performance bonus cushion in addition to the salary cap. This bonus cushion allows teams to exceed the salary cap by 7.5% in potential performance bonuses. The caveat to this bonus cushion is that by the end of the season you still need to be under the salary cap including all achieved performance bonuses or the excess amount will be charged against next year's salary cap as a bonus overage.
The most famous example of bonus overage:
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The 2009-10 Chicago Blackhawks are the most famous example of a bonus overage. Bonuses earned by the likes of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews following their Stanley Cup win pushed the Blackhawks' final cap payroll $4,157,753 past the upper limit. As a result, the $4,157,753 overage reduced their 2010-11 upper limit from $59,400,000 to $55,242,247 million. That, in part, resulted in the trading of Kris Versteeg, Andrew Ladd, Dustin Byfuglien, Brian Campbell, and others.
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For the Flames, these players could potentially earn up to the following performance bonuses for this season:
Monahan: $850,000
Bennett: $2,300,000
Gaudreau: $1,850,000
Granlund: $132,500
Total: $5,132,500
According to generalfanager.com, the Flames project to have $2,187,567 in cap space by the end of the season (and yes this number doesn't include performance bonuses).
This means if you assume the Flames make no cap moves from now until the end of the season and all the players above achieve full performance bonuses, the Flames will face a bonus overage $2,944,933 for the 2016/2017 season.
In other words, the Flames could effectively have a salary cap approximately $3 million less than the rest of the league.
Before Flames fans panic and bash each other's heads open to feast on the goo inside. Keep in mind the following:
1. The public doesn't generally know the conditions of performance bonuses on ELCs. The Flames will have a cystal clear knowledge of the performance bonuses and how much are actually achievable for the above players. For all we know, a large percentage of the above bonuses are already not achievable.
2. Flames are likely to move out a few contracts (namely Hudler and Jones) that should add some cap space to the Flames end of year number, assuming in those moves more salary goes out than comes back.
Depending on the size of the potential bonus overage, the Flames are less likely to retain salary to increase a player's trade value. If they can move a player out without retaining salary they need to do so.
Also could limit how much salary the Flames can take back before the trade deadline. i.e. relatively small cap hits or no cap hits can come back to the Flames in any deals to limit the bonus overage for next season.
One unique situation that could help out the Flames is Jared Cowen. As indicated by the following article, the Flames could trade for Jared Cowen and buy him out. Because of his contract structure and age, buying out Cowen this summer would gain a team $650k in cap space for next season, followed by a cap hit of $750k in 2017/18:
http://www.tsn.ca/mondaymustread-rar...value-1.428314
Still don't panic - lots of assumptions being made.