Équipe: 2022-23 Canadiens de Montréal

Date de création initiale: 5 août 2021

Publié: 5 août 2021

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

The purpose of this exercice is to evaluate the salary cap implications of Weber’s potential return for the 2022-2023 season.

Firstly, the Habs would likely not be able to retain Chiarot’s services even if the Habs bridge Romanov under 2M AAV (Kulak’s contract). A LD prospect on ELC would have to be promoted to replace Chiarot ; fortunately the Habs have Norlinder/Guhle/Harris who could be ready by then. Weber’s potential return also entails that hunting for PMD this offseason (Dunn, ie.) might be off the table…

Secondly, even if the Habs manage to bridge Kotkaniemi and Evans under 4M AAV for the pair, signing Suzuki to 6+ years around 6M AAV appears impossible without a significant trade to shed salary on the wings. If the Habs cannot shed Drouin’s contract (or Byron+Lekhonen’s) Suzuki could only be bridged, in other words.

In this scenario, I didn’t bother with potential trade to alleviate the cap space situation (-5.3M) and essentially just re-signed players to have a 22-players roster.

Quite a puzzle, to say the least!