It was a tough year for the Canadiens, to put it lightly. After reaching the Stanley Cup Final last season, they finished dead last in the standings this season and have the highest cap payroll in the NHL with Shea Weber being on LTIR for the entire year and Carey Price for most of it. The end result was zero banked cap space during the season.
That means that any bonuses earned during the course of the 2021-22 season will have to be charged against their spending limit for the 2022-23 campaign. As CapFriendly points out (Twitter link), that is a fairly significant amount as it totals $1.1325MM, broken down as follows:
Nick Suzuki: $537.5K
Cole Caufield: $300K
Alexander Romanov: $212.5K
Jordan Harris: $82.5K
Montreal already had over $81.5MM in commitments for next season (per CapFriendly) before even factoring in this bonus overage. As a result, they are effectively over the cap for next year already before factoring in Weber’s expected return to LTIR while the uncertainty surrounding Price’s future will cloud things as well.
The list of free agents for the Canadiens isn’t overly long with many of their prominent rentals being moved at the deadline. Romanov and Rem Pitlick highlight the pending restricted free agents while Chris Wideman and Mathieu Perreault are among their unrestricted free agents. Romanov will be eyeing a sizable raise from his $894K entry-level cap hit while Pitlick, a midseason waiver claim, ended his season with 37 points in 66 games, putting him in line for a decent increase in his first trip through arbitration eligibility. The good news is that re-signing their players shouldn’t be too costly but they may need to make moves to free up space for those deals depending on Price’s situation.
With the Canadiens squarely in a rebuild, GM Kent Hughes was already going to be looking to clear out some veterans. But with this penalty basically putting them over the cap for next season already, the need to clear some contracts out of necessity will certainly increase.
Not really a big deal if you consider Price possibly won’t play again. That’s $10.5 mil on LTIR.
Pretty sure you still have to be cap compliant before he can be moved to LTIR
Nice. Good job of tanking this year as well.
Exhibit #57 on why max salary + max term is a team-killer.