The Philadelphia Flyers have $4,031,477 of remaining cap space below the ceiling following yesterday's announcement that Carter Hart has bee re-signed to a three-year contract worth an average annual value of $3.97 million. That may or may not be just be enough space to fit arbitration-eligible Travis Sanheim under the ceiling but it certainly won't leave any wiggle room to manage around injuries or have anything banked.
What are the Flyers options at this point?
1) Wait it out for awhile. Teams do not have to be cap compliant until opening night rosters after filed with the league shortly before the start of the season. Injuries and/or performance issues in camp could alter the composition of the opening roster.
2) Go lean on opening roster. This is far from ideal but the Flyers could put just 12 forwards and/or six defensemen on the opening roster if doing so will prevent them from exceeding the cap ceiling temporarily.
3) Acquire an LTIR player. If the Flyers were to acquire a player they know has little to no chance of being medically cleared to play (either for the whole season or at least for a large portion at the beginning), they could maximize a long-term injured reserve (LTIR) allowance to replace the injured player's salary on the NHL active roster. In recent years, Tampa Bay and Toronto made use of this strategy to be cap compliant during the season.
4) Make a relative minor trade. Even if an eventual Sanheim contract leaves the Flyers a little bit over or under the cap ceiling, they could create a little bit of wiggle room by making a minor trade. For example, Nicolas Aube-Kubel is entering the final season of a two-year contract that carries a $1.075 million cap hit. It's never ideal to trade from a position of weakness in order to get a team to take a contract off your hands for cap relief, but the lower the salary, the more readily accomplished in can be. Conversely, moving out James van Riemsdyk's $7 million cap hit for the next two seasons would be pretty tough to do, especially at this stage.