As has been reported over the last week, it seems likely that we’ll see a flat salary cap next season. It certainly wasn’t unexpected but this is forcing reality to set in as to how bad of a spot the New York Islanders are in cap-wise. Adding to this, we also know now that compliance buyouts aren’t likely to be reintroduced, which is a major blow for New York.
So the team has roughly $10 million of cap space to get Mathew Barzal, Ryan Pulock and Devon Toews signed for next season. Obviously, that’s not possible and as I’ve mentioned before, the three contracts could cost about $18 to $20 million per year.
So in turn, it becomes a matter of which contracts are going to be moved out to create space on the roster. The Islanders will be dealing someone who brings value to the team and subtracting from their roster or paying a team to take a player on a bad contract, like Johnny Boychuk or Andrew Ladd, off their hands. Considering both players have multiple years remaining on their deals, it won’t be cheap to move either contract and after their deadline deals, the Islanders may not even have the assets to move enough salary. Even if the Islanders are able to give up most of their remaining quality draft picks to get a contract off the books, that probably won’t be enough space created.
Here’s my take on the Islanders’ options, assuming no compliance buyout comes.
The obvious option is to start by dealing Nick Leddy, which would free up $5.5 million in cap space and gets the Islanders some decent picks back in return. We’re likely talking either two second-round picks or perhaps a second and a third-round pick. These assets, likely packaged with others as well, could be traded to get Johnny Boychuk’s contract off the books (nobody is likely to take Ladd’s, based on the length of it). Or instead, perhaps the assets are split to get a combination of either Cal Clutterbuck, Thomas Hickey and/or Leo Komarov’s contracts moved. Either way, moving their few assets remaining while also losing at least one quality roster player is going to hurt the Islanders badly.
There’s also the option to move a second quality roster player like Josh Bailey or Casey Cizikas for assets, as opposed to giving up assets to get a contract of the books. Bailey, Cizikas and Leddy are probably the only players of value on the roster that the Islanders could still get assets back for, without significantly weakening their team. This could be a better option, but losing both two of Bailey, Cizikas and Leddy obviously isn't ideal, with nobody really ready to replace them. Another problem with this is that with the cap being flat, few teams will likely be willing to give up many assets to trade for Bailey/Cizikas/Leddy, as they’ll be dealing with their own cap crunch. On top of that, Cizikas' contract isn't great, even if he does bring value. The reason giving up assets for someone to take on a bad contract is potentially more likely, is because rebuilding teams have the room to take on bad contracts because they’re not trying to compete in the next year or two anyways. That said, both Boychuk and Ladd do have a modified no-trade clause which the Islanders would need to work around.
Finally, there's also the chance the Islanders sign each player to a shorter deal, in order to keep the AAV down. Maybe this means getting the three players locked up for around $14 or 15 million rather than close to $20 million. This could save the Islanders from having to give up assets to get a bad contract off the books or losing an extra player of value and it seems like it's probably going to be necessary, even if it'll hurt the team in the long run.
Maybe Lou Lamoriello sees something we don’t. He’s a veteran NHL general manager and has experience dealing with the salary cap. But a flat cap wasn’t anticipated at the start of the season or even the trade deadline and this looks like it won't end well for the Islanders, no matter how it plays out.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
How bad of a cap situation do you think the Islanders are in?
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