When I last, and first (http://lewkc1.blogspot.ca/2016/07/cap-space-available-to-oilers-in-2016-17_6.html), made a post about the Oilers and their cap situation I posited that the Oilers could reasonably add about 3.5M to 5M in cap hit before the season started without likely incurring a meaningful cap overage in 2017/18. They did just that signing Kris Russell and Eric Gryba to contracts that carried 3.1M and 0.95M cap hits respectively.
In making the assumptions to come up with the 3.5M to 5M number I made a variety of assumptions. Three large ones I would like to touch on in this post include:
- Ference provides no LTIR relief and his cap hit counts in full
- Draisaitl will not hit his 1.625M Schedule B
- Oilers will aggressively manage the roster to keep daily cap hits at a minimum
When I was planning on doing this I was a bit worried about trying to project where the Oilers are currently in respect to the cap given injuries, call-ups and what not. Luckily I discovered that not only does the wonderful capfriendly.com have cap tables with the Oilers' cap hits going forward they have also done all the really heavy lifting and built out a daily cap tracker which I will use as my jumping off point for overage issues. I also reference bonus info off of capfriendly.com or off my first post which was pulling off the now offline generalfanager.com.
Coming into today Capfriendly (https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/oilers/cap-tracker) had the Oilers projected cap hit without any bonuses (and without any Ference LTIR relief (more on that later)) at about 69.62M leaving about 3.38M in space at the end of the year for bonuses without generating overages for 2017/18. Now that number will change daily dependent on IR usage (players going on IR open up a roster spot but still count fully against the cap), roster callups and demotions as well as trades. All that said, the further you get into the season the less you can meaningfully impact your year end cap space as your cap hit accrues daily based on the players on your roster each day (This is why, for example, players with larger hits are easier to move at the deadline rather than early in the year because the bulk of their contract has been paid).
Now the Oilers currently have 5 players on the IR, 1 on the LTIR and are carrying a full 23 player roster meaning they are accruing cap hits for 29 players. This is unlikely to continue and if the Oilers believe they are at risk of overage I believe they will get more aggressive managing the roster daily to keep the cap hit down. Given this, and in the absence of trades that could possibly reduce the cap hit further confident, I feel comfortable assuming the Oilers will be able to finish the year closer to 69M leaving them around 4M in space for performance bonuses.
So knowing they have 4M in space for performance bonuses the next question to ask is what is a reasonable expectation of performance bonuses that can be earned by players given how the season is playing out. In my first post I outlined the Oilers were at risk of players earnings 4.763M in bonuses which would be slightly over the 4M available but not catastrophic. Let's revisit those assumptions by player quickly:
- McDavid: Projected he would hit everything. No change there. 2.85M. Change 0M
- JP: Projected him to hit 2 Schedule As (Ice time and +-) for a hit of .425M. Seems unlikely he will hit these or stay on the roster for the full 42 games to be eligible so revising this down to 0M. Change (0.425M).
- Nurse: Projected to hit 3 Schedule As (Top 3 in +-, Top 2 in blocked shots, top 4 in Ice time (avg per game)) for 0.6375M. Given his injury these seem unlikely now aside from maybe TOI and +-. I'm going to take take this down to 1 Schedule A (one of the TOI or +-) for 0.2125M. Change (0.425M)
- Draisaitl: Projected to max out 4 Schedule As. I see this is as likely and we will have a deeper discussion about his 1.625M Schedule B so for now no change. Change 0M.
- Others: The only realistic candidates for more performance bonuses would be Benning or Caggiula. Benning has no bonuses this year and 0,3N next year so we can rule him out. Caggiula has a max of 0.425M which I would presume would be standard Schedule A types (I don't know for sure). I'm going to assume he won't hit any given injury time, but there is some risk here. Change 0M
Summing these changes the Oilers can now reasonably expect performance bonuses earned (without addressing Leon's Schedule B risk) of 3.913M (4.763M less then 0.85M we no longer expect earned by Nurse and JP). Against our projected 4M of space in this scenario the Oilers could basically expect to just scrape by with no overages for the 2017/18 season.
Now for Leon to hit his 1.625M Schedule B he would need to hit just ONE of the following conditions:
top 10 forward in the league in goals/assists/points/points per game (min 42GP), top 5 in league in Hart/Selke/Richard voting, NHL First or Second team all star, Conn Smythe.
Now none of these are a slam dunk but he's certainly in the range. Given what we've looked at I think its fair to assume if Leon hits his 1.625M Schedule B it will be incurred as an overage for the Oilers next year.
The last 2 things to talk about are the assumptions I mentioned at the top; roster management and Ference.
The Oilers have placed Ference on the LTIR which to me tells me they believe he can provide them some salary cap relief. This is at odds with my understanding of LTIR which as I understand it only provides relief when a team is at/or near the cap limit and then goes over the cap limit thereby getting relief from LTIR. My understanding is this needs to happen during the season which can't happen for the Oilers because they are well clear of the cap without bonuses and bonuses don't accrue daily but rather show up at the end of the year depending on which conditions have been met by players with bonuses in their contracts. The CBA is not clear on this. Speeds (@hockeysynposium) on twitter rightfully pointed out some vague language in the CBA which did in fact indicate that maybe you could utilize LTIR against bonuses. I'm not sure how the mechanics of this would work but if this is in fact the case, the Oilers have no overage risk as the 3.625M in LTIR provided by Ference would more than absorb any Oiler bonus scenario. But this is not clear. Any feedback is appreciated.
The last point is Edmonton's roster management. Observing the Oilers so far this year they haven't really acted like a team that was worried about cap management or bonus overage. They have always run a full roster of 23 even with a large IR piling up. Most teams do this but if you were really worried about cap management you could easily run a roster of 22 (1 surplus D and 1 surplus F) rather than the full 23. They also haven't always called up the cheapest cap hit possible to backfill an injury (Simpson and his 0.835M cap hit versus Musil and his 0.6M cap hit as an example). These are little things but things a team that was actively managing its cap hit to as low as possible should be doing if they were concerned about overages. This could mean they believe/know they have plenty of cushion in the Ference LTIR, did not expect Draisaitl to threaten a Schedule B Bonus, or poor cap management from Edmonton's front office. I welcome feedback on any of these options as I'm just theorizing.
So as a quick conclusion if Leon doesn't hit his Schedule B bonus the Oilers are at a negligible risk of cap overage penalties next year but if he does they risk a substantial 1.625m overage barring Ference LTIR relief (which is unclear) or substantial cap shedding moves (likely trades) needed relatively soon to maximize cap impact across the remainder of the season.
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