With the growth of the salary cap potentially stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s an argument to be made that the NHL Seattle expansion team is in an even better position to prey on other franchises desperate to shed salary or protect star players, like Vegas did in 2017.
During the general manager meetings in early March 2020, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly projected a salary cap between $84 million to $88.2 million.
That was before things went haywire.
About a week later, the 2019-2020 NHL season was put on pause. The pandemic still remains and there’s no end to the “pause” in sight.
The upper limit of the NHL salary cap is determined based on the revenue accumulated by the NHL in previous seasons, according to CapFriendly.com. The NHL salary cap is a “hard cap” meaning there’s no leeway for teams to go over and pay a “luxury tax,” like the MLB and the NBA.
If the regular season — or in a doomsday scenario, the entire Stanley Cup playoff, is cancelled, the lost revenue from ticket sales, TV revenue, etc. would significantly hinder the league’s seasonal revenue, and in turn, future season’s salary caps.
According to The Athletic’s James Mirtle, the salary cap is unlikely to spike up as expected and in an absolute best-case scenario, it would rise by about $1 million, up to $82.5 million.
Unless an NHL’s front offices also doubled as a public health experts, it’s unlikely NHL teams baked in a global pandemic into their team’s salary cap projections.
This could potentially affect NHL Seattle in the lead up to the 2021 Expansion Draft in four different ways:
There are myriad teams in salary cap hell and teams do not protect talented players with hefty salaries in an effort to free up cap space.
Teams make “protective deals” with Seattle, ensuring Seattle selects a certain player in exchange for something else back. Vegas took advantage of several teams in the lead up to the 2017 Expansion draft with similar deals. For example: Anaheim would send promising defenseman Shea Theodore to Vegas in exchange for the Golden Knights selecting Clayton Stoner (and his $3.5 salary) in the Expansion Draft. Similarly, Columbus would trade William Karlsson to Vegas if they agreed to take David Clarkson (and his $5.25 cap hit). Neither Stoner or Clarkson would ever play in the NHL again and Karlsson and Theodore remain franchise cornerstones for the Golden Knights.
The other 31 teams take this upcoming offseason to shed salary and save cap space for the 2021-2022 offseason and the Seattle Expansion Draft.
The league steps in to provide some sort of relief for teams given the circumstances. There could be something similar to the amnesty clause that was prevalent in the National Basketball Association from about 2010 to 2016, in which one player could be released and their contract will be paid in full but won’t count against the salary cap. If imposed by the NHL, it would effectively be a “get out of jail free card” for any team.
Graphic by John Barr
The most auspicious scenarios for NHL Seattle are No. 1 and No. 2. It ensures NHL Seattle will either land an established and productive veteran — even if his contract is loaded with AAV (average annual value) and term — or acquire draft capital and quality prospects.
It’s unclear whether NHL general managers will be wary of making protective deals after Vegas fleeced several teams in the process.
But franchises were already eager to cut salary in 2017, even with the upper limit of the salary cap rising from year-to-year.
Now that teams almost certainly won’t see the upper limit of the salary cap increase by 2021, teams may have no other choice but to swing deals with Seattle.
That is, of course, the real life scenario isn’t akin to No. 4 above, where the league provides relief for teams due to the unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances.
When the season is finished or canceled, the ensuing offseason will shine light on just how advantageous this may be for Seattle. The NHL could provide relief to teams to mitigate how cap-strapped teams may be coming into 2021, but regardless, NHL Seattle will enter the 2021 offseason with the biggest weapon of any team: a blank slate of cap space.
I will be doing a series of posts on the Vegas Golden Knights to help understand likely scenarios for Seattle in just 15 months’ time when Seattle starts building their roster. This first post is taking a look at how Vegas approached their NHL Expansion Draft.
Pre NHL Expansion Draft
The Vegas Golden Knights were able to accumulate two groups of assets: 1) the right (and obligation) to select one player from each of the 30 existing teams in the Expansion Draft 2) NHL Entry Draft Picks. There are rules and requirements of the Expansion Draft, but that is a post for a different time. There were also a couple Free Agent signings before the Expansion Draft, but the focus of this first post is on the assets Vegas accumulated in that Expansion Draft. Vegas’s negotiations of Expansion Draft player selections also had a major impact to their Entry Draft Picks. As a matter of setting a visual baseline, here is simply what Vegas’s Expansion Draft selection and Entry Draft Picks would have looked like at the start. Just like all NHL teams, the Vegas Golden Knights are entitled to 7 NHL Entry Draft Picks per year.
I know this is a simple bar chart that probably doesn’t need to be a standalone visual but just bear with me a bit.
Requirements and Side Deals
The expansion rules stated that the Golden Knights were required to select one unprotected Expansion Draft eligible player per team in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. There was a lot of nuance in the expansion rules in regards to protecting players, but to keep it simple, let’s just assume one player must be selected from each NHL team. What is also allowed, which was used strategically by Vegas, is the negotiation of terms of their player selection with each respected team. This is commonly referred to as a “Side Deal”. An example of this was when Anaheim agreed to trade Shea Theodore to Vegas if Vegas selected Clayton Stoner in the Expansion Draft. Clayton Stoner was injured and would never play another NHL game. Theodore was a young up and coming defenseman for Anaheim. Vegas gets a young prospect while Anaheim would get the Clayton Stoner contract and financial commitment taken off their books. There was a total of 10 Side Deals in the Expansion Draft that netted the Golden Knights an additional 6 players, 10 Entry Draft picks, and signing rights to one player.
Summary of the Expansion Draft.
From a player perspective, this is how players were acquired in the Expansion Draft.
Notes: In the example above, Clayton Stoner would be considered “Expansion” while Shea Theodore would be considered “Expansion (Trade)”. Nikita Gusev was unsigned at the time of the Expansion Draft but his NHL rights were owned by Tampa Bay and traded to Vegas via a “Side Deal”. That asset is classified as “Expansion (Trade-Rights)” in the chart above.
Expansion Draft Detail
Shuffle the Assets
The makeup of the Golden Knights assets from the Expansion Draft would start to morph over time as the Golden Knights would start to shuffle things around. Keep in mind that an NHL roster carries 23 players and even with Vegas’s AHL team it was inevitable that Vegas would need to cut down its player assets.
At a high-level, there were 4 different scenarios that would play out of these player assets.
Left Via UFA – This is a scenario where Vegas drafted a player that they knew would become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st (a week later). This would imply they had no intention of signing this impeding and free agent and did not see any other notable assets on the NHL team’s roster from which they came. Thorburn (WPG), Brickley (CAR), & Berube (NYI) are the players in this category.
The Flip-Trade – In this scenario, the Golden Knights more than likely had a predetermined arrangement with another NHL Team that if Vegas chose player X on Team A, then Team B would then trade assets 1 & 2 to Vegas for player X. There were 4 players that were immediately traded to another NHL Team, quite literally, the very next day after being drafted in the Expansion Draft. Emeline (MON -> NSH), Schlemko (SJS -> MON), Methot (OTT -> DAL), and van Riemsdyk (CHI -> CAR) are in this category.
LTIR/ Salary Dump – this is a scenario where a team had some deadweight on their roster that was eating into their salary cap. Vegas would have a lot of room in their salary cap and could take on the cap-hit in exchange for other assets. Stoner (ANA), Clarkson (CBJ), and Grabovski (NYI) fit in this category. (LTIR = Long Term Injured Reserve)
Trade – This was more of a conventional trade that really didn’t have anything to do with the Expansion Draft other than the asset. Calvin Pickard was acquired in the Expansion Draft, but was traded to Toronto in October after Vegas would claim Malcom Subban (not reflected in chart below) off waivers right before the inaugural season.
Start of the inaugural Season
Here is a final look at the players that were acquired directly or indirectly via Expansion Draft that would start the 2017-18 season as property of the Vegas Golden Knights.
Of course, one of the biggest stories with the Expansion Draft was how Vegas accumulated NHL Entry Draft picks. Draft picks were acquired in the Side Deals and the Flip-trades. Vegas would acquire a net of an additional 14 draft picks via Side Deals and trades.
The Seattle expansion might not look like the Vegas Expansion Draft, but the scenarios will be similar. Most pundits are forecasting that there won’t be a lot of Side Deals available for the Seattle Expansion Draft. It’s possible, but there will be teams with too many quality assets at one position that would require exposing those assets in the Expansion Draft. Teams could be motivated to trade a prospect or two, to keep Seattle from selecting an unprotected player. Furthermore, there will likely be salary cap issues of some NHL teams that can be exploited for Seattle. For more information on the Expansion draft rules, check out this post on NHL.com.
In the next post, I will dig into how these assets were used in the 2017-18 season. For players, it will be where they played and for the entry draft picks, how they were utilized (i.e. picks or trades).
