The new TV deal doesn’t start until 2021-22, the cap will be $84 million max. next year.

Cernak would get more money. Ondrej Palat would be traded before Joseph. Salary thing..

Also you need 23 players to start the season so I dont know if you are assuming Sergy or Cernak are gonna be signed after Oct 1st or it was just a mistake.

20 man roster is 200 IQ

At the very least Point is going to get the same 9.5 Kucherov and Vas just got.

you mean "at most" lol, he's got three more years of RFA status, which are less expensive. no chance he gets more than them, especially when the argument could be made that he was partially a product of kucherov this season

can't trade Palat because of the full NTC, and no he ain't waiving it. Cernak deserves more money, hence the 2 year bridge deal to help him get paid once Palat and Johnson are offloaded through trades/expansion draft. and you need 21 if I'm not mistaken and I just forgot to put Gemel Smith on the active roster lol

okay well if that's the case then I'd trade the last season of Paquette and Coburn's contracts to offset that $1m lost and sub in ELC guys

ya but the same could be said for marner and tavares but players agents dont seem to be looking at it that way.

Marner seems to be a huge exception to this because he was his team's leading scorer while two guys he outplayed (in his/his agents eyes) made $11+ million. Point has been very vocal about caring more about winning than money and wanting to work out a deal to stay in Tampa, so I fully expect $9m to be where he lands

I think "fans" need to realize that the cap isn't going to go up much (if at all) next year due to the contract negotiations. Everyone thought the cap would be $83mm this year, and it's $81.5mm. Everyone will be lucky if it breaks $83mm next year (I actually expect it to go to $82mm because of the lockout possibility).

That being said, the moves listed here are reasonable, though I think someone like Johnson would get moved before Joseph, mainly because of potential return, salary, and age. Next year, the average age of the team will be close to 30, and you could start to see older players being moved out as the Stanley Cup window starts to shut, and it refreshed for younger talent. Johnson would fit perfectly on a contending team as a middle 6 C.

Sharks pass on Erne.

The cap probably doesn't go up that high; as others have pointed out, the new TV deal doesn't come into effect for another year. A 21-man roster is a bad idea, and even with the higher cap hit, we don't have space for another player. Technically, we're allowed to do that, but no GM ever has, and there's a pretty good reason for that. If two players have minor injuries or are going through bad streaks and we don't want to play them (which happens all the time), we have to waive them and almost certainly never see them again, or LTIR them and go 10 games and 24 days without them.

Cernak probably wants more money. McElhinney probably isn't traded; I don't think anyone really sees that signing as a mistake, and Wedgewood is not an NHL-ready backup. Cirelli probably wants more money. If Volkov or Verhaeghe makes the NHL (and the latter has to be on an NHL roster this year), they'll probably want a bit more than $1m (but if they don't do that well, maybe not). Since the cap probably doesn't go above $83.5m, we need to somehow free up around $5m extra to make things work.

The first answer is to sign Point for less. $9m may be a discount on a long-term deal, but the cap is going up soon and Johnson/Palat/Gourde all have NTCs that will soon end, so the best answer is to bridge him. While he's not taking $7m or $8m on a long-term deal, on a bridge deal, that AAV becomes a lot more reasonable (especially since he seems willing to take a discount). That doesn't solve everything, but it makes the situation a lot easier. The next thing would be to try to move Palat or Johnson. Johnson looks like the more valuable piece, but Palat is a bounce-back candidate and it's hard to predict where those two players will stand by the end of the year. If Palat doesn't have a bounce-back year, if he refuses to waive his NTC, he can be put on waivers. Otherwise, putting either player on waivers would be a pretty sad move. Teams like the Avalanche that need depth scoring would take Johnson, though, and he might waive if he's being moved to another good team. If not, waivers are still an option since it at that point becomes clear that there will be a major cap casualty. The other option would be to move one of Sergachev/Cernak, preferably for a cheap, serviceable defenseman.

No-Trade Clauses my friend, both Palat and Johnson have them, and there's no way they're waiving them

also, if you're insinuating that I'm not a fan because I was optimistic about the cap rising then holy **** you're dense