Zaitsev will take more than that to clear

Nah.

Arizona actually needs some bad contracts to hit the cap floor next year. A 2nd is a very fair sweetener.

I've been looking at how they'd make this work as well, the problem isn't the year above, it's the year after this as Sanderson is up and hopefully he'll be demanding a 5+M ticket (meaning he's played well). If the cap only jumps $1M per year and Sanderson needs another 4-6M, maybe more, who knows, then it gets tricky.

You can free up some money if you buy out White this current off season, that will save you just shy of 1M, and if you can find a dance partner to trade him without retention then you can free up a bit more. Bobby Ryan's buy out comes off the books after the above (the 23-24) season, so there's another 1.8M. Then the hope is that the cap jumps quite a bit after the players pay back the owners. All this is for nothing if the Sens aren't willing to spend to the cap though.

I was looking at the following season as well. The roster is pretty set and they’d have money to pay Sanderson. But we’d need a goalie as well. Agreed that this is all a moot point if we aren’t willing to spend to the cap. If there’s an internal cap below $80 mil then we’re going to lose a very good player unfortunately.