SMOOTH SAILING AND OPPORTUNITY AHEAD: AN UPDATED LOOK AT THE CANUCKS’ SALARY CAP WITH ARTURS SILOVS SIGNED
Enhance. Enhance. Enhance!
Every time we get more clarity on the picture that is the impending 2024/25 Vancouver Canucks, it looks a little better.
GM Patrik Allvin and Co. have been as busy as anyone else thus far in the 2024 offseason. They’ve cut some excess weight and salary from the roster. They brought in a truckload of quality free agents. And, perhaps most importantly, they’ve locked some of the key players they already had into contract extensions.
Hockey rosters are living documents, and there’s never really any ‘final’ move to be had. But the last item on Allvin’s absolute must-do list for the summer was crossed off on Tuesday when the Canucks announced they had re-signed playoff hero Arturs Silovs to a two-year, $850K AAV deal.
By now, you’ve already heard plenty of praise for this contract, so we won’t belabour the point here. Suffice it to say that having a rookie come in, save the season, win the hearts of the fanbase, and then sign for the next two years at a rate just barely above minimum salary is an unmitigated win for the franchise.
It also sets them up for some smooth sailing with the salary cap moving forward – and plenty of room to make further changes and improvements when the opportunity arises.
When last we met to talk cap (but not in the Gen Z parlance), we had to slot the newly-signed Jiri Patera and his $775,000 salary into our projections as the backup goaltender. At the time, we mentioned that based on the numbers already on the books, the Canucks could afford to hand Silovs a new deal at approximately $1.2 million AAV and still fit it under the cap.
So, with Silovs in at $850,000, the Canucks are definitely under the cap. How far under the cap? One last time (until the next time), let’s dive into the math.
Forward Roster
The Canucks almost always roll with an active roster of 13 forwards, eight defenders, and two goaltenders. We’re going to assume that holds true for the majority of the 2024/25 campaign.
As of now, the Canucks have 14 forwards listed on their active roster. That does mean that one of them will have to be moved of the roster in some capacity at some point, but we will get to the variables in a moment.
For now, we can definitely count on Elias Pettersson ($11.6 million), JT Miller ($8 mil), Brock Boeser ($6.65 mil), Jake DeBrusk ($5.5 mil), Conor Garland ($4.95 mil), Dakota Joshua ($3.25 mil), Danton Heinen ($2.25 mil), Teddy Blueger ($1.8 mil), Pius Suter ($1.6 mil), Kiefer Sherwood ($1.5 mil), and Nils Höglander ($1.1 mil) being there.
That’s 11 of the 13 accounted for already.
The final two spots are currently slated to be filled by two of the trio of Nils Åman ($825K), Phil di Giuseppe ($775K), and Vasily Podkolzin ($1 mil).
For the purposes of our projection, we’re going to cut Di Giuseppe out of the picture for now. There are two reasons for this. One, he’s probably honestly the odds-on favourite of the set at this point. He’s also the one with the lowest salary. In other words, we’ll be able to tell you how much space the Canucks have with Di Giuseppe being the one cut, and that can carry with it the knowledge that if, say, Åman or Podkolzin were cut instead, there would thus be even more room.
With those aforementioned 13 forward tallied together, we get a total cap hit of $50,025,000.
Defence Roster
The blueline is a little easier to figure out for the Canucks.
The top-six would seem to be locked in already, and contain Quinn Hughes ($7.85 mil), Filip Hronek ($7.25 mil), Carson Soucy ($3.25 mil), Tyler Myers ($3 mil), Vincent Desharnais ($2 mil), and Derek Forbort ($1.5 mil).
The Canucks almost always roll with two extra defenders on the roster, and right now those look to be Noah Juulsen ($775K) and Mark Friedman ($775K). For the purposes of cap projections, it doesn’t really matter who makes the cut as extras, as all of those with a realistic shot (Cole McWard, Jett Woo, Guillaume Brisebois, Christian Wolanin) have a $775K cap hit, too.
On top of those eight defenders, we also need to count Tucker Poolman and his $2.5 million cap hit. Poolman is considered LTIRetired, and has indeed spent the majority of the past two seasons on long-term injured reserve.
But though Poolman has not returned to health, he’s currently not slated to be on LTIR for 2024/25 – because the Canucks won’t need him to be. Not yet anyway. But more on that in a moment.
For now, we can tally up the eight active defenders and one inactive defender into a total cap hit of $28.9 million.
Goaltending Roster
If you thought the defence was easy to figure out, the goaltending is a real cinch.
Thatcher Demko returns to the starting role at a crisp $5 million cap hit.
His presumed backup is Silovs at that aforementioned $850,000 rate.
But there’s always the chance that he is beat out in training camp by Patera, at which case the rate if $775,000.
For now, we will keep our faith in Silovs. That gives the Canucks a goaltending total cap hit of $5.85 million, which is less than a lot of teams pay for their starter alone.
Dead Cap
Unfortunately, we’re going to have to keep this section going for a long, long time.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s buyout penalty remains on the books until 2031. This season, and next, his buyout penalty gets a raise. For the 2024/25 season, it is set at $2,346,667.
Added to that amount will be the $712,500 the Canucks retained on Ilya Mikheyev’s salary for the next two seasons.
That gives the Canucks a dead cap total of $3,059,167.
Working Total
We can add up the $50,025,000 for the forwards…
And the $28,900,000 for the defence…
And the $5,850,000 for the goaltenders…
And the $3,059,167 of dead cap…
And we wind up with a nice, neat total of $87,834,167.
With the cap being set at $88 million for the 2024/25 season, that leaves the Canucks $165,833 under the ceiling, without needing to place Poolman on LTIR.
(Again, remember that the space could increase if, say, Di Giuseppe made the roster over Podkolzin, or if Patera beat out Silovs.)
What can the Canucks do with $165,833 in space?
The Benefits of Cap Space
That $165,833 doesn’t provide enough room for in-season call-ups or anything like that, at least not right away.
But because the Canucks are not in LTIR, and are actually under the actual cap ceiling for the first time in recent memory, they’ll be able to accrue cap space.
Cap accrual is accounted on a daily basis, using the rough formula of (Total Days in the Season/Remaining Days in the Season X Real Cap Space=Daily Accrual).
As of right now, were the Canucks to maintain that $165,833 in space from here until the Trade Deadline, they will have accrued a total of $734,403 in functional spending room.
That’s still not enough to cover even a single minimum player contract. At this point, unless they can find a way to part with Poolman’s contract or something similar, accrual will provide the Canucks with wiggle room, which is always nice to have, but not much more.
Here’s a benefit that the $165,833 will have right off the bat, should the Canucks choose to use it: flexibility for Day One roster shenanigans.
We covered the issue of bonus performances last season as it pertained to Vasily Podkolzin. To make a long story short, teams receive a “cushion” for the full amount of potential bonuses for any player on their Day One roster, but if they want to call that player up thereafter, they need to have enough space for their base salary and all their potential bonuses.
It’s why the Canucks cut Podkolzin in training camp last year, but then called him back onto the active roster for Day One.
We should see something similar pulled with Jonathan Lekkerimäki this year.
With up to $475,000 in potential performance bonuses, Lekkerimäki is easily the Canucks’ most bonus-laden prospect. If he’s on the season-opening, Day One roster, that $475,000 amount becomes the Canucks’ bonus cushion, and they’re free to call up Lekkerimäki and his bonuses (or anyone else and their lesser bonuses) at any point without complications. Should those bonus qualifiers be hit thereafter, and should the bonus amount received push the Canucks over the salary cap, the bonuses are simply shuffled to the next year’s cap, as happened with Andrei Kuzmenko and his hefty first-year bonuses.
So, the Canucks have a vested interest in having Lekkerimäki on their opening roster, whether he genuinely makes the team or not.
That is done easily enough with the extra space they now have. It’s as simple as papering Silovs down (he’s the only player on the active roster to not require waivers) on Day One, and calling Lekkerimäki up in his place. Lekkerimäki has a cap hit of $918,333, which is a bit more than Silovs, but that’s where the $165,833 in space comes in handy. It’s more than enough wiggle room to swap Lekkerimäki and Silovs on the opening roster, lock in the maximum bonus cushion, and then swap them back again before any games are played.
That $165,833 is also, for the record, enough extra space for Lekkerimäki (or any other forward prospect, as all carry lesser cap hits) to just straight-up make the team over someone like Di Giuseppe or Åman.
Like we said, it’s wiggle room, and wiggle room means options.
And then, of course, the Canucks always have the option of placing Poolman on LTIR at any point, which opens up to $2.5 million in spendable relief space. There’s no benefit at all to placing Poolman there until that space is needed. But when/if that time comes, the space available can be thought of as at least $3.25 million, because any new acquisition would mean moving someone else off the active roster, and that player would have to carry a cap hit of at least $775K.
There you have it, and there the Canucks have a bunch of things they haven’t had on a regular basis anytime recently. Genuine cap space, ample wiggle room, and the kinds of options and opportunities that financial flexibility can provide.
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