Dead Cap?

[TheIronMaiden]

There has been a lot of buzz in the Conroy Era about weaponizing cap space to facilitate trades and acquire assets.

In the back ground of this there is fan commentary that Flames ownership is reluctant to pay for players who are not playing for the Flames. Though this has not always been proven to be true.

I wanted to have a look at how much dead cap exactly is floating around the NHL today. Just to help contextualize these discussions.

To start there are Nine teams who do not have any Dead Cap (though it's worth mentioning that some of these teams have players who count against their cap but no related money, think Brad Richards and Vincent Lacavier)

ANA
NYI
STL
COL
CAR
LVG
SEA
NYR
TBL


There are another Five teams that have less than 1 million dollars in dead cap

CBJ
NJD
TOR
DAL
WSH


With that out of the way there are Eighteen NHL teams that we should consider as carrying around Dead Cap. That means 56% of NHL teams.

1. MIN $14,743,590*
2. NSH $11,805,556
3. SJS $7,274,167
4. CHI $6,266,667
5. WIN $5,466,667
6. MTL $4,268,750
7. PITT $3,729,167
8. PHI $3,571,428
9. EDM $3,016,667
10. LA $2,725,000
11. UTT $2,253,334
12. CGY $1,875,000
13. DET $1,588,889
14. BUF $1,444,444
15. BOS $1,333,333
16. FLA $1,241,667
17. VAN $1,212,500
18. OTT $1,000,000

*this will only for this year then it goes down to $2,666,666.

[FlamesAddiction]

I think less important is how much a team carries in one given year, but rather the duration. Things can turnaround quickly for a team where suddenly cap space is needed. The last thing you want is to have an opportunity to acquire a good player player and not be able to pull it off because you have too much dead cap. Or have a situation where young players exceed expectations and you don't have room to sign them. It's one thing to be in cap trouble because you have "too many" good players, but another to be there because of dead cap space.

I'm all for cap retention this year, and probably next year. But I would be apprehensive to go beyond that.