Big Push

I dont know if this contract can be done?

The cap only goes up by 1 mil next year and weegar adds 4.5 mil to his deal, meier would add 3 mil and huberdeau adds 5.6 mil. Your only losing around 2 mil in expiring deals (which include some depth guys which you need to resign/replace). I don't think this can get done Calgary can barely afford Weegar and Huberdeau going into next year and that's with losing assets for cap reasons (Backlund, Zadorov, etc.)

Meier is bot worth more than 8.5M, but even at that price Calgary can't fit him inder the cap next year. Mangiapane has been excellent since being reunited with Backlund and Coleman, he's not going anywhere

SJ has not interest in any of those players

Wrong on the 1st two points (at least you're persistent when it comes to Meier proposals). You are right on the 3rd point.

Meier is absolutely worth more than $8.5M. We were more than happy to give Huberdeau $10.5M, but we think Timo Meier isn't worth more than $8.5M?

And yes, they can afford it. You can exceed the cap by 10% in the off-season. You move out worse players. 10 guys are on expiring contracts next year. There is a zero percent chance all 10 are more important than Meier (let alone any, save for maybe Lindholm), and a zero percent chance all 10 would be extended beyond next year anyways. Start there.

But ideally, yes, you make the deal without including Andrew Mangiapane. Add now with as little subtraction of key current players as possible.

Alright your new so I'll break this down for you.

Point 1: lets look at some comparable fairly recently signed players to Timo Meier in terms of production and overall impact that were RFA's at the time of their deals. Fiala (7.8M, 9.5% of cap at signing), Nylander (6.96M, 8.76%), Kyrou (8.125M, 9.7% starting next year). Meier is an RFA at the end of this season, he is not a UFA that can demand a huge pay or walk elsewhere. He is also not remotely the same caliber player as Huberdeau despite his struggles this year, he was still well over a ppg for 4 seasons straight. There is no chance you can ever convince me Meier is worth more than 10% of the cap as a player that has never finished above a ppg and is an RFA in the offseason.

Point 2: Exceeding that cap in the offseason is irrelevant because you have to be cap compliant by day 1 of the regular season. Lets look at that list of 11* players currently with 2 years remaining in order of greatest cap hit: Backlund, Hanifin, Lindholm, Tanev, Toffoli, Zadorov, Kylington, Dube, Rooney, Pelletier, Ruzicka. Pelletier and Ruzicka are coming off ELC's and almost certainly get raises. Backlund, Hanifin, and Tanev all have relevant No Trade Clauses so they are hard to move (and none of them should be anyways since they are all extremely important to the roster). Lindholm is the Flames 1C so thats out of question. Toffoli has very similar production to Meier for nearly half the price of his next deal. So that leaves Zadorov, Dube (RFA), and Kylington. Calgary is already projected to have just under 1.8M cap and 18 players signed next year (that is the core listed on Sportrac, it does not include any of rookies except Ruzicka). Assuming Rooney 100% gets dumped (pretty much guaranteed) that will add an extra 1.3M but then an extra roster spot needs to be filled. The point I'm making here is we probably still have to move cap out in the summer to just be compliant.

If your argument is that we can fit him in if we do major roster surgery and don't care about anyone like Vegas or a video game then sure but that's not remotely realistic and a complete waste of time to debate. We could fit EK65 too by that logic. The point is we cannot effectively fit him under the cap without completing butchering our depth.