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Jordan Staal trade - Part 3: Canes math and filling out the roster |
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First, imagine for a moment that the Canes could spend to the salary cap. WE WOULD BE LOOKING AT ADDING 2-3 MORE HIGH-END PLAYERS and trying to decide whether we should bid higher on Parise or Suter. But back to reality, GM Jim Rutherford probably has $3-5M left to spend. I think he has 2 spots to fill – 3rd line center and top 1st or 2nd pairing defenseman.
The Jordan Staal trade both fills a hole (top 6 forward probably to play with Eric) and opens another (3rd line center to replace Brandon Sutter). On offense, I think GM Jim Rutherford went for a high-end player and in the process upgraded the entire offense. The Canes will not be the most offensively deep and rich team in the league, but there is enough ammunition to build 2 solid lines that can score and there is a decent mix of veteran and young depth and role players to fill out the majority of a 3rd and 4th line.
Goalie is simple with Ward #1, Boucher as a veteran backup and Peters as a decent #3 option with some NHL experience.
The defense is hazier. You have Tim Gleason and Joni Pitkanen as proven commodities in the top 4. And you seem to have enough depth to fill a 3rd pairing and extras in guys like Jay Harrison, Derek Joslin, Bobby Sanguinetti, possibly Ryan Murphy, etc. But the current roster would slot both Justin Faulk and Jamie McBain in the top 4 on the blue line. Both could work. But I think calling either one a sure thing is overly optimistic. The Canes got themselves in a defensive predicament a couple years back when they gave too much weight to a strong 30-game stint to finish the previous season by Jamie McBain and slotted him in the top 4 to start the next season. He struggled mightily early on and left the team scrambling to patch holes. McBain started similarly slow last season before playing better the 2nd half of the season. To call him a sure thing in October/November when he has been anything but the past couple years is rolling dice. We have less data on Justin Faulk, but after a great training camp, he fell flat for about 10 games before heading down to the minors to right the ship and return to play a solid rest of the season. Did he just need time to adjust? Or is he similarly a slow starter like Jamie McBain? Will he hit a sophomore slump? Staring at all of these questions and then calling him a sure thing for a top 4 to start the year is, again, rolling dice.
It is almost the exact reverse of last summer. Last year, he had Allen, Pitkanen, Gleason and Kaberle (never mind that he flopped) and some decent depth. At forward, JR rolled the dice with a bunch of cheap options that could work. He had youth options in Dalpe (pre-season frontrunner), Boychuk and Bowman. He had veterans who could rebound in Ponikarovsky and Stewart. Certainly some combination of these puzzle pieces would fit together to build a solid 1st line around Eric Staal. Well, it didn’t. Eric Staal started very slow and had nothing but a revolving door of line mates running in with gauze and bandages to try to stop the bleeding while the season slipped away.
I think the “puzzle pieces that could work” scenario is exactly where the Canes sit on defense right now. McBain could work. Faulk should or could work. Harrison could play above his natural 3rd pairing slot possibly. But woulda/coulda/shoulda brings a lot of risk.
I think Rutherford needs to spend most of what he has left to add a safer, more proven top 4 defenseman. Then he only needs to get 1 of Faulk, McBain or possibly Harrison in a pinch to play in the top 4. I think he will also shop for a less-hard-to-find 3rd/checking line center. Brent excelled in his 4th line/penalty kill/power play point man role under Muller, but I think he is overslotted (especially offensively) as a 3rd-liner. And the whole point of getting Jordan Staal in the 1st place was to put more oomph in the top 2 lines, so slotting someone like Ruutu or Jokinen down to center a 3rd line partially defeats the purpose.
So my math says that GM Jim Rutherford counts up whatever he has left in his budget pulls out a modest amount ($1-1.5M) to find a 3rd line center and throws the rest of it at signing the best top 4 blue line option he can get.
So how much is this budget? I was on vacation last week (when I drafted most of these blogs, so that life and work did not continue to get in the way ;-)), so I did not see the N&O until the Staal stuff splashed across it. If anyone has seen mention of a budget either there or on the Canes web site, please holler. They usually do publish some type of rough number right about now heading into free agency.
Minus that, I think it goes like this:
Last year, the Canes opening day roster of 23 had a salary of $51.4 million. This included Murphy at $1.3M who was about certain to go back to juniors after his trial, so in reality the salary was almost exactly $50 million. (Note that we Canes fans talk about salary not salary cap. As a team that spends way under, the real $ out of pocket are the guide not cap hit math that averages things out.)
Right now, the Canes sit at $48.5 million. This includes 20 players (2 G, 6 D, 12 F). When I do line combos and pairings, I leave the 2 holes at 3rd line center and 1st or 2nd pairing defenseman. There are 3 things that come into play in trying to guess how much and what kind of money is left to add players. First is the minimum which is really TBD pending the new collective bargaining agreement. There is rumbling that small market teams will be given more flexibility here, but who knows for sure. There is the budget for this year. And last and not to be ignored there is the salary structure going forward. I’ll skip the first one altogether. The Canes should be close to the bottom but within reach of it such that they don’t need to do anything crazy to reach a floor if it is similar to the current deal. And with no playoffs for a couple years and a sense of urgency, I think you could make a case that Rutherford gets more financial leeway for this season. So this might imply that the Canes could afford the best for a 3rd line center (Gaustad) or could even stretch to fit a Bobby Ryan or a Parise. But I think this ignores the generally frugal approach and more importantly the salary scenario going forward.
When you look at Canes players signed for 2013-14, you get 9 players (about half the roster) under contract. Due to the escalating contracts that Rutherford is so fond of, there is a built in $3.4M salary increase for these players (Staal +$750k, Ruutu +$1M, Gleason +$1M, a couple other smaller increases). And then you get the need to re-sign Skinner at something greater than his current $1.4M entry level contract and also the increase in Jordan Staal’s new contract from the $4.5M he is making this year. It seems like at a minimum this adds another $2.5ish million (Skinner at $3M and Staal at $5.5M). The Canes can try to cut salary on other guys by going cheaper/younger, but the potential gain here will be small. Maybe Larose’s spot could be filled by youth and save $1M and a couple other few hundred $K savings can be found, but there are no big contracts that come off the books to make it easy to save money elsewhere.
So what does it all mean? I think it means that the sense of urgency could make some extra money available for this season to push to make the playoffs, but the impending budget issues that are already scheduled for next summer put a damper on the ability to sign players for years out. The result is that Rutherford could have some extra money for 1-year contracts, but you can’t get high-end UFAs to sign a 1-year deal. So that leaves 2 options: 1) Saving most of the money to be a rental buyer at the trade deadline; 2) Trading for player(s) in the last year of their contract such that you are not committed past this season. The 2nd option is an interesting one. It would go against precedent, but might the Canes take on a player who is a quality player but overpriced in the last year of his contract from a team desperate to unload cap space? It goes something like this…The Canes take the overpriced contract to get a player on the cheap from a team that more wants out of the cap than anything. The Canes give up very little because of this. I haven’t had time to dig up specific options for this but you get the idea. More likely is that the Canes hope they can hang in the race better than last year, and they are buyers at the trade deadline.
So what happens this summer in free agency and possibly trades? I think Rutherford’s remaining budget ends up being something like $4-5M. That is basically the $1.5M he still has left from last year plus another $2.5-3.5M. And for a team that just can’t afford to enter all the bidding wars (the 1 big move was JStaal) that should provide enough dry powder to fill out the roster of a team capable (not a sure thing) of making the playoffs. I think the money gets spent adding a checking line center to a 2-year deal in the $2-2.5M (total) range. And I think the rest buys the best defenseman he can get to fill out the top 4. If anyone pushes the budget higher, I think it is more likely to be a stretch on the defenseman if prices go high like they always do. I would be surprised to see the Canes go a bunch over this number (reference next summer’s numbers again) to add another high-end forward to play with Staal or Staal or because they go premium and get the best money can buy for a 3rd center in Gaustad.
After a long layoff from blogging, simply from being too busy, I have 1 more blog in the hopper from my vacation that names the names for who the Canes might chase to fill the 2 openings that I have identified and a few dreamer ideas for guys that just might make Karmanos stretch a little farther financially.
Sorry for the long blog if anyone actually made it this far. I wasn’t sure how to split this into a couple pieces that didn’t need to cross-reference the other stuff.
For a quick heads up when I post a blog, please follow me on Twitter at CarolinaMatt63.
Go Canes!
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