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Originally Posted by Aarongavey
Ya I think that is all accurate. The Flames also have a problem of reaching the cap floor if they trade all 3 of the pieces. They are currently projected to be about 3 million over the salary floor. If they move out Coleman and Kadri without retention they would be about 9.4 million under the salary floor with 6 players to sign and rookies cannot make up that gap and they have no RFAs that will cost a lot of money so they almost certainly have to sign some players to reach an almost 77 million dollar floor.
The next year they would have another 10 million or so falling off their payroll and the salary cap floor will be rising by 7 million and they only need to sign Hunter B and Kuznetsov as RFAs.
The Flames will likely need to sign UFAs or acquire salary in trades but I don’t think it will be because they are actively trying to win, rather they need to be in compliance with the CBA.
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Looking at the UFA group for this year... it would be really hard to make up that much salary in one signing. You would basically need to land Panarin or Laine. Or you go to someone like Schmaltz and seriously overpay them for a year.
The 2027 UFA group looks better, for now, but that will likely change next summer once teams are able to start extending their star players. Odds are you offer Frost a big contract to stay while giving Kuznetsov and Brzustewicz healthy RFA contracts (similar to Bahl).
In a way, it makes sense to trade Kadri with 50% retention (if you can get a team to pay for it). You would have to think that there would be some amazing offers for Kadri at $3.5M considering how good the offers are (supposedly) for getting him at full price.