Quote:
Originally Posted by FanIn80
Their literal active roster is over $92M. Subtract whatever you want from it, but just because Quick is on the bench, it doesn't mean they're not paying him. They still had to have an owner capable of spending $106M to be able to ice the roster they have.
And bumping up the $5M cutoff to $6.5M to make your point does nothing to dissuade my point. My point about the $5M contracts was about depth, not high-end. Everyone talks about how Vegas can roll 4 lines, but it's a lot easier to roll 4 lines when you have 9 $5M+ players worth of depth/talent.
Most of the owners outside of NYR, TOR, MTL, VGK, (maybe other huge markets I'm missing) wouldn't authorize taking on a $106M player budget, even if they were presented with the same LTIR opportunities that Vegas had. That's the literal definition of buying a cup.
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Vegas isn't actually spending over $100M. Due to salary pro-ration and things like that the salaries for Quick and Barbashev cost much less in real money than their full year cap hit. This is part of being buyers at the deadline instead of sellers.
Total Cap Hit: $107M...but that's not realistic due to people like Barbashev and Quick not actually costing nearly that much, this isn't Vegas actual spend.
Accumulated Cap Hit: $95.8M...this one is more relevant because it is actually what Vegas "paid" but includes Lehner, Weber, and Nolan who didn't play a game this season and account for $11.9M of that, and Vegas likely had insurance for those contracts.
So in terms of actual spend it's probably more like $83.9M which is the accumulated cap hit, minus the guys that didn't play a game all season.
Once again not nearly as bad as you're making it seem.
And the salaries do contribute to the depth question, Vegas can afford more of the $5M players because they aren't paying as many $6.5M players.
I'll use your example of $5M salaries. Vegas has 8 active $5M+ salaries on their roster (Eichel, Stone, Pietrangelo, Karlsson, Martinez, Theodore, Marchessault, Smith), those contribute a total cap hit of $54.6M.
Florida's 8 highest salaries on their active roster (Barkov, Bobrovsky, Tkachuk, Ekblad, Reinhart, Bennett, Verhaeghe, Montour) cost a total of $55.6M.
So Florida's spending $1M more on the top end of that roster (8 highest paid players) than Vegas is. So it's that which allows Vegas to have extra money to spend on their depth. Then you consider that Bob makes $10M while Hill is making $2.8M and it starts to explain why it feels like Vegas has so much more roster depth.
Vegas just has much better cap allocation across it's roster than Florida does. Overpaying for a goalie is such a double edged sword...if they are on their game they can win you a series on their own, but if they struggle then you are really stuck lacking in other areas on your roster. Plus goalies are rarely consistent season to season.