The New York Islanders’ season hasn’t even been over for 48 hours but it’s already time to start talking about the offseason and what we should expect to see from Lou Lamoriello and company. With coaches and general managers finding new homes around the league, other teams aren’t wasting any time preparing for next season and neither should New York.
One glaring area of need for the Islanders was their forward depth. Losing John Tavares before the start of the year certainly didn’t help and while New York actually has a pretty deep lineup of forwards that can produce some offense, there aren’t enough forwards that can produce a lot of offense.
For a team already needing to re-sign Robin Lehner, Brock Nelson, Anders Lee and Jordan Eberle should they choose to, you have to wonder if Lamoriello could to try clear some cap space in order to go after some larger free agents and open up roster spots.
In the salary cap era, it’s hard to give bottom forwards like Matt Martin, Cal Clutterbuck and Leo Komarov the contracts that they have. The three forwards take up $9 million in cap space and though they add grit and character to the team, these players can’t be making that much money on a contender. If you were able to fill those spots with two players at a low cap hit or on an entry-level contract, you’ve got another $7 million or more to go shopping in free agency and invest in a top forward. It’s very unlikely that Lamoriello would move these contracts, let alone even one of them though. He’s went out of his way to acquire Matt Martin two different times and essentially brought Leo Komarov with him in his move to New York. But if the Islanders were looking to shed contracts, this is where they could start.
Aside from those three, management could hope all they want to be able to move the Andrew Ladd contract but in reality, it’s just not likely to happen. It’s too much term and too expensive.
On defense, though Johnny Boychuk isn’t perfect and his contract should realistically be quite a bit cheaper, he was an important part of the core on the backend. Scott Mayfield and Adam Pelech are both on great contracts with some term left and you get what you get with Nick Leddy, which is offense.
With Ryan Pulock and Devon Toews still under contract, Thomas Hickey is without a doubt the odd man out and at $2.5 million against the cap per year, it’s a realistic contract to be moved. Hickey lost his spot in what was a really rough year for him and you don’t want to be paying a seventh defender that much money to sit on a bench. It’s not too expensive of a contract and there’s a good chance another team would be willing to take a chance on him. If you're betting on one player being moved in the offseason, it's Hickey.
Again, I’m not saying a lot of these contracts are likely to be moved but between Cal Clutterbuck, Thomas Hickey, Leo Komarov and Matt Martin, that’s $11.5 million that could be used elsewhere. That’s significant spending money to make sure all of your players are locked up or to be able to make a big splash in free agency.
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