Your Sunday before the season starts cap space post

Okay, it's finally time to talk about cap space. I've refused to discuss it since the season ended last spring because nothing about cap space matters until it's real. It gets real tomorrow at 5 pm, so there is today's waiver wire available to sort out the roster.

Naturally, you've read up on all the forms of IR, so you know the important stuff about SOIR:

I don't have to explain that players hurt in training camp on one-way contracts count fully against the cap and cannot be waived until they are healthy.

To begin, the "for sure" players we know are on the team:

Auston Matthews	13,250,000
William Nylander	11,500,000
Matthew Knies	7,750,000
John Tavares	4,389,280
Max Domi	3,750,000
Matias Maccelli	3,425,000
Dakota Joshua	3,250,000
Nicolas Roy	3,000,000
Steven Lorentz	1,350,000
Bobby McMann	1,350,000
Morgan Rielly	7,500,000
Jake McCabe	4,513,102
Chris Tanev	4,500,000
Oliver Ekman-Larsson	3,500,000
Brandon Carlo	3,485,000
Simon Benoit	1,350,000
Anthony Stolarz	2,500,000
Total:	80,362,382

Special cases

All count against the cap but not the roster limit:

Joe Woll: $3,666,667
Scott Laughton: $1,500,000
Marshall Rifai: $775,000

New total of: $86,304,049 with one goalie, six defenders and 10 forwards.

Dead money (assuming David Kämpf and Matt Benning are not on the roster):

Buried contracts over the limit: $1,350,000
Bonus overages: $626,230

Giving a new total of $88,280,279.

Additional Players

Dennis Hildeby: $841,667
Seventh Defender: from $812,500 to $1,000,000
Calle Järnkrok: $2,100,000
Nick Robertson: $1,825,000
Easton Cowan: $873,500

Giving a new total of $94,920,446 (I used the high number for the seventh defender) and two goalies, seven defenders and 13 forwards which adds up to 22 players. The salary cap ceiling is $95.5 million.

If the Leafs want to use LTIR on the two SOIR cases to carry more than 22 players for the time being – either because they want to sign someone or because they don't want to actually send David Kämpf down right now – then the likely course of action is to get that total closer to the cap ceiling on Monday, and then place the injured on LTIR.

The simplest way to do that is to leave Kämpf on the roster, paper down* Easton Cowan who does not require waivers, and the new total is $95,196,946 or only $300,000 under the maximum. Then Laughton and/or Rifai can be placed on LTIR and Cowan recalled, giving a cap-compliant 23-man roster while still carrying Joe Woll's cap hit.

There may well be ways to make that work out even better, but considering Laughton and Woll are not out long term, it doesn't seem all that important to hit the closest possible total salary cap before invoking LTIR.

*Paper loans to the AHL are permitted until October 10.

Why is this all an issue? Because the closer the total cap hits are to the cap ceiling when players are placed on LTIR, the bigger the total available cap space actually is. If that doesn't really make sense to you, trust me, it's why the Leafs traded for the David Clarkson contract that one time.

Note: when Marshall Rifai recovers, he requires waivers at that time to go to the AHL.

Today at 2 pm, expect the Leafs to waive some of their surplus defenders and Michael Pezzetta. The recalled players who were on the roster last night have already cleared waivers if they require them.

The one exception to the simple waiver list is if they choose to sign James Reimer to a contract. They would likely want to waive him immediately to send him to the AHL rather than Dennis Hildeby.

And that's the very undramatic cap space and waiver picture this year. Once Scott Laughton is ready to return, the whole issue will get revisited.

Cap Space Shuffle