There are so many things up in the air still for this NHL season which will also carry over into the 2020-21 season. Perhaps the biggest is the salary cap, which puts the Sabres in a tough position when trying to navigate how they plan to use their cap space.

Before the novel coronavirus shutdown, the NHL’s upper salary limit was expected to be in the neighborhood of $84 million or so. With the league paused and questions remaining on the resolution of the regular season and Stanley Cup Playoffs, the possibilities of the cap remaining at $81.5 million or even being reduced are possible.

It makes projecting how teams can and will use cap space challenging, but I’m going to take a stab at it with some help from our friends at CapFriendly.com. It’s possible there will be a lot of turnover next season. The Sabres have 12 players in the organization that are due to become unrestricted free agents and another 15 who will be restricted free agents. Previously, I took a look at who should stay and who should go among forwards because that’s one area that could see the most turnover. This examination of the cap is going to go deeper to see if these ideas can be done or not.

Having 27 out of 45 current contracts from the 50-contract limit up for negotiation is wild. The Sabres also have just over $47 million committed against the 2020-2021 cap. Here’s what that roster looks like. I’ve omitted prospects and current Rochester Americans players. That total also includes $791,667 on Cody Hodgson’s buyout, which counts against the Sabres through 2022-2023.

The Sabres will have to deal with a couple of key issues during the offseason: One is a new deal for Sam Reinhart, who is due for a raise and a long-term deal. The other is a salary cap overage penalty. That’s going to make that seemingly large amount of cap space more difficult to manage.

About the coming cap penalty

Sabres GM Jason Botterill said following the trade deadline that he knows they’ll have a cap overage penalty next season. John Vogl went into detail about what that means and where that comes from. Currently the Sabres have three players on long-term injured reserve (Vladimir Sobotka, Matt Hunwick, and Tage Thompson) and their projected cap hit is $82.8 million — $1.3 million over the upper limit.

Depending on how the season concludes and whether or not the Sabres have more games to play will affect how much that overage could be. CapFriendly kindly indulged a request to ballpark what the penalty for next season could be based on how things stand right now. That’s very important to note because the NHL is working on plans to restart the season.

Right now, the Sabres would have a salary overage of $1.275 million because they’re projected to be over the cap and have bonuses due to Rasmus Dahlin worth $850,000 and Henri Jokiharju worth $425,000. Victor Olofsson did not hit any of his bonuses for games played this season. If the cap stays at $81.5 million, it means the Sabres would have up to $80,225,000 to spend on salaries. That’s not ideal.

It could get worse if the season restarts.

Dahlin has another bonus in his contract that earns him an extra $2 million if he finishes in the top-10 of defensemen in assists. That bonus would become a penalty against the cap next season and balloon overage to $3.275 million, leaving the Sabres with $78,225,000 to spend.

As it is now, Dahlin’s 36 assists put him two behind Cale Makar and Tony DeAngelo, who are tied for ninth, three behind Neal Pionk in eighth, and four back of Torey Krug, Keith Yandle, and Ryan Suter who are each tied for fifth. Recall that Dahlin missed eight games at the end of November into December with a concussion from an elbow to the head by Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak.

If there’s a season restart, Sabres brass and fans won’t have the standings to really worry about, but they will have Dahlin’s assists to keep an eye on.

Figuring out the roster

Trying to predict what contracts will be like before the cap figure is set and what the escrow level will be for the players is difficult. With a new Collective Bargaining Agreement on the horizon as well, it’s not the best time to try and get a contract done. There are a lot of unknowns that will get figured out down the road and how teams, players, and agents deal with it will be fascinating. It’s truly unknown territory.

With that said, our friends at Evolving-Hockey projected what they believe free agents both restricted and not can get. The Sabres have four RFAs worth noting: Sam Reinhart, Victor Olofsson, Brandon Montour, and Dominik Kahun.

Here’s how their projections work for those players if the salary cap remains at $81.5 million:

Projected Sabres key RFA contracts Player Length of contract Cap hit (in millions) Sam Reinhart 8 8.744 Victor Olofsson 4 4.977 Brandon Montour 3 4.802 Dominik Kahun 2 2.912

Reinhart is the big one and we’ve done loads of analysis into what he might sign for, most recently in January. Olofsson and Kahun are coming off their entry-level deals and will get raises, but the question is how much. If those numbers are close to the ballpark which they sign for, it means nearly $21.5 million to keeping them and puts the Sabres at a virtual salary of $68,451,667 – and with the $1.725 million cap penalty — they’ll have $11,773,333 to spend. Here’s how that roster looks:

That leaves Buffalo with five starting forward spots to fill as well as two extra skaters and re-signing Linus Ullmark.

Ullmark is due for a raise on his $1.325 million salary. His 2019-2020 deal resembled Blue Jackets goalie Joonas Korpisalo’s contract closely. Korpisalo just re-signed with Columbus for two years, $5.6 million (a $2.8 million cap hit). For argument sake, let’s say Ullmark gets a similar deal. That leaves the Sabres with $8,973,333 left against their cap.

We haven’t even looked at the 12 UFAs-to-be or the 11 other RFAs yet.

Tough choices

Trying to fill out the rest of the roster with less than $9 million to spend is not going to be easy. It also means the team may not be much better.

Let’s start off with the assumption Dylan Cozens will be playing in Buffalo and not Lethbridge again next season. We’re aware of the risks of putting a young player into a situation with a lot of early expectations as we’ve seen with Casey Mittelstadt. Cozens is coming off a tremendous WHL season in which he’s a finalist for league player of the year. His entry-level deal would have a cap hit of $925,000 and would be ripe with bonus opportunities.

We’ll also figure Arttu Ruotsalainen will be in North America full-time next season. If the Sabres could’ve kept him here this season, they would have, but his entry-level deal had a clause in it which stated he had to go back to his team in Finland if he did not make the NHL. The second and third years of his contract do not have that stipulation. He had his best pro season, with 43 points in 44 games with Ilves in Liiga this year. Whether he’s a fixture in Buffalo or Rochester is to be determined, but we’ll put him in Buffalo for now with a $925,000 cap hit.

That leaves three forwards and two extra skaters left to add with $7,123,333 to spend. That gives us a budget of 1,424,667 per player, so let’s deal with the qualifying offers for the rest of the restricted free agents. This is an area which the Sabres have a lot of leverage with their more NHL-ready players.

Not every RFA gets a qualifying offer (those who don’t become unrestricted free agents) but every RFA that does get one doesn’t have to accept it. For guys like Reinhart, Olofsson, Kahun, and Montour, there’s no way they’d accept them for less money. The same likely applies to Ullmark as well. For the rest of this group, they don’t have much leverage.

Pilut spent most of the season in Rochester and struggled in Buffalo when he did play. Thompson is coming off shoulder surgery that ended his season and will have him rehabbing all summer. Mittelstadt is in Rochester after struggling in Buffalo. He’s also a 10.2(c) RFA (check the NHL CBA to read about that) because he hasn’t had three pro seasons to be a standard Group 2 RFA and he cannot receive an offer sheet. Some teams still use offer sheets, right?

Lazar has had a solid season with Buffalo and likely would want to parlay that into a raise. This is where some may say keeping Lazar and letting Johan Larsson walk would be a good, frugal move. It would be financially wise, yes, but Larsson has proved to be very valuable in his role, and like I argued before, he’s worth keeping. Evolving-Hockey projects him to land a four-year contract with a cap hit of $3.074 million. With $7,123,333 left to the cap, does it make sense to retain him at that cost? Doing so would leave Buffalo with $4,049,333 to spend on four more players. If Lazar stays and gets a raise, (Evolving-Hockey says $813,200), that could work, but it makes it tight. Here’s what that would look like:

This roster comes in with a cap hit of $79,611,242 with $1,888,758 of cap space. Keep in mind, if the season is re-started and Dahlin hits the bonus, that adds another $2 million to their cap overage penalty and means either only carrying one extra skater or not being able to re-sign Larsson. It’s a delicate balance.

If the plan is to fill out the ranks with players accepting their qualifying offers and free agents who are looking to catch on and play for anyone for as close to league minimum ($700,000) as they’re willing to swallow, then that’s doable. If it means elevating players through Rochester like Jean-Sebastien Dea, Rasmus Asplund, C.J. Smith, William Borgen, Jacob Bryson, and Casey Fitzgerald, that means putting a ton of pressure on your top players to perform and stay healthy.

It also means walking away from most, if not all, of the other UFAs-to-be. Letting Zemgus Girgensons, Wayne Simmonds, Scott Wilson, Michael Frolik, and Jimmy Vesey go to fill out the roster with cheaper free agents and mostly unproven prospects doesn’t sound like a great plan unless those prospects all blossom. That’s too risky, especially for a team that’s looking to get back to the playoffs. It’s the kind of move made by teams that have found themselves hard against the cap after years of sustained success.

Conclusion

This is a tricky exercise to examine with so many variables left to sort out regarding the remainder of 2019-2020, revenue, and how to adjust the cap and escrow for 2020-2021. Taking all of this with a grain of salt is wise because it can all change in a moment, affecting contract negotiations that will have to see some expectations altered.

However, the oodles of cap space the Sabres appear to have on the surface is a bit of a mirage. Even if the NHL economy needs a season to get figured out after this paused one is finally concluded, issues wait down the road. Rasmus Dahlin is eligible to sign an extension once the offseason kicks off. The team’s prospect coffers are always in need of restocking, but most of the top-end talent is in Buffalo or soon will be.

The ways to take pressure off this potential situation are to either make low-ball offers to the players or to make a trade (or two) to loosen up the salary cap pressure. Whether that means moving someone like Rasmus Ristolainen or moving one of the RFAs who are asking for more than management is comfortable with seems obvious. If there’s a rollback of the salary cap, it’s possible a compliance buyout could be included, but banking on that happening would be foolhardy right now. Regardless, there’s a lot of work ahead for Jason Botterill and these decisions are only made more difficult by the situation.

(Top photo: Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images)