With their salary arbitration hearing scheduled for Monday morning, the Flames and RFA winger Garnet Hathaway have exchanged their filing figures. Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reports (Twitter link) that Calgary has offered a one-year deal at the league minimum $650K salary while Hathaway is seeking $975K. Both offers are one-way contracts.
The 26-year-old split last season between the Flames and their AHL affiliate in Stockton. He was quite productive at the minor league level, collecting 11 goals and eight assists in just 18 games. However, that production wasn’t carried over to Calgary. While Hathaway got into a career-high 59 NHL contests, he collected just four goals and nine helpers while logging 11:32 per night.
Hathaway spent most of last season in the bottom six and will likely reprise that role once again in 2018-19, especially with some of the additions they made to shore up their existing bottom six in center Derek Ryan and winger Austin Czarnik.
While the $325K difference may seem relatively inconsequential, Calgary projects to be fairly tight to the salary cap next season. They currently sit with just shy of $5.4MM in cap room per CapFriendly but still have RFA defenseman Noah Hanifin to lock up. He will take up the bulk of that remaining cap space so the Flames will be trying to save whatever they can with Hathaway in an effort to leave themselves with a little bit of flexibility heading into the year.