Kevin Cheveldayoff, the acting Jets GM, has some decisions to make and we're not talking about the two big ones with Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien. He has ten players on his roster who will be free agents in some capacity next year, 5 RFAs and 5 UFAs.

Instead of looking at each player and their future contract individually perhaps it's time to take more global look at the team, roster and salary cap.

Those 10 players equal roughly 16.565 million in salary expense this year. The projected cap hit for the end of this playing hear is 60.5 million depending on which site you use to calculate it, second lowest in the league. With a salary cap ceiling expected to stay about the same, 71.4 million, is this year using conservative (as it should be) estimates the Jets have 11 million in cap space to be used. With all retiring contracts considered the estimates are roughly 27-28 million.

So now the questions becomes how do you want to spend that money?


Again, let's not worry about players but instead work about the bigger picture of the team and how that money should be allocated. Currently it looks like this as a percentage of the team's actual cap hit. It where the team spends it's money not where it spends in relation to the cap limit.

Forwards 50.7%
Defense 40.85%
Goaltending 8.49%

Here is the top 3 teams in the league:

Washington

Forwards 59.82%
Defense 30.23%
Goaltending 9.62%

Chicago

Forwards 56.53%
Defense 28.48%
Goaltending 9.4%

Dallas

Forwards 56.88%
Defense 26.61%
Goaltending 15%

Here are the teams above Winnipeg fighting for a playoff spot:

Minnesota

Forwards 57%
Defense 28.6%
Goaltending 12.9%

Vancouver

Forwards 55%
Defense 30.7%
Goaltending 10%

Anaheim

Forwards 68.1%
Defense 26.57%
Goaltending 3%

(note that I did calculations before attributing bonus amounts which then skews percentages to not reach 100% in all cases)

Of those teams there is not one within 10% of the Jets expense on defense and the average expenditure on forwards 58.88% and the Jets are a full 8% lower. Now it is important to note that spending money on the right players is an important facet of salary allocation especially when comparing to other teams. The Jets do not have an Ovechkin, or Toews or Perry or Sedin or Sequin or Keith, or Suter, or Edler. Nor do they have a Holtby, or Crawford, or Dubnyk and on and on and on.

The first point many would make is this: 'that's why they aren't spending that kind of money Tessier!' and that person would be right but...there is always a but. The highest spending team on that list is the Canucks at 72 million which is basically 12 million more than what the Jets spend. That's not a lot of money when spread out over 20 roster players in fact it works out to $600k per roster player.

With almost 41% of his roster salary allocated to defines now, what happens with a new Byfuglien contract at 7 million? It would go up to 42.5% of expenditures. In actual fact it would stay about the same as Grant Clitsome's contract will be finished, but it's still far higher than the immediate competition and the best teams. However, Trouba is getting a new deal to so it could be even higher.

So two questions come out of this- does Cheveldayoff see that his roster expenditures might be out of balance versus the league and does it make sense to readjust the balance?

Most fans would probably say that there is not enough value in the defence core to warrant 40% of expenditures going to it and they might be right. The problem is who is jettisoned to help adjust the balance and whom do you spend that money on in the forwards?

It would be silly to trade Myers only to use the space on Ladd and with no movement expected with the salary cap, any deal would probably have to have salary coming back to the Jets. Some are proposing trading Enstrom, the top left-handed D on the team. That frees up money but does it actually help the team?

The challenge right now for the Chevy and the Jets is he needs to find a way of adding affordable depth until he decides what players he can reward with smart but more lucrative contracts and yes that means Scheifele. After him though, where does the salary have to be spent?

That's the difficult situation the team finds itself in right now- fearful of being able to attract quality free agents and reluctant to make al but the most essential trades the Jets have pushed themselves into a situation of roster value imbalance. There may come a day when the players from within fill out that roster with the salaries and structure that has the Jets mimicking the best teams in the league in terms of allocation. That day is not here yet so Chevy and the Jets march on but they still have to ice a roster and they still need to structure it accordingly so would rebalancing it starting this coming deadline and continuing this off season be a bad move?

We'll probably find out within the next 29 days if that's even a consideration.

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