We just learned that Kent Hughes has a big upside to his next trade and it would allow him a possible big move

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MarcO
December 15, 2022 (4:40 PM)

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A few days ago, Gary Bettman announced some crucial news for many general managers in the National Hockey League.

He announced that the salary cap for the next season would only go up by $1M. This is nothing to help the league's GMs who are already struggling to complete transactions.

On this topic, Darren Dreger recently mentioned the frustration of league executives to improve their roster. The reporter quoted Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin, who is currently very aggressive in the market.

"I talked to Bill Guerin and he's frustrated, but he's an aggressive GM. He wants to do something. The reason he's frustrated is that other GMs just don't seem to want to get active in that direction. A lot of that has to do with the salary cap." - Darren Dreger

As Marco d'Amico of MTLHockeyNow reminds us, the situation won't be any better at the trade deadline. In recent years, the formations waited before trading in order to increase their payroll, as Marc Bergevin did by recalling and sending back players from Laval. This strategy will not be possible this season for many teams in the league.

To date, half of the teams, 16, are using the long-term injured list (LTIR) to blow up the payroll. This is a lot more than last season when 7 to 10 teams used this strategy.

If the CH is part of the formations using the LTIR, the formation has however an advantage of size as said by D'Amico.

Speaking of Montreal's cap situation, the Canadiens are currently sitting at $2.57 million in LTIR cap space right now with 23 healthy players on the roster.

However, Sean Monahan and Brendan Gallagher are still counting against the cap at the moment, meaning the Canadiens are essentially paying for a 25-player roster when they only have 23.

When either Gallagher or Monahan returns, it's safe to assume that Rem Pitlick will be sent to Laval, saving the Canadiens $1.1 million. But what happens when the Canadiens are healthy?

Montreal's true maximized cap space at the NHL trade deadline will be up to $4.5 million, as they would save $1.1 million in salary for every contract they award to the Laval Rocket or place on waivers." - Marco D'Amico

In addition to that, Kent Hughes will see nearly $20M released next summer as four players become free agents, namely Jonathan Drouin, Evgeny Dadonov, Sean Monahan and Paul Byron. And let's not forget that the CH still has the possibility of withholding salary on three players according to the collective agreement...

Another important factor not to be neglected is time. The CH is in no hurry to trade given the transition season they are in. They can take their time, look at the desperate teams and bid on them. Kind of like Hughes did last year with Ben Chiarot, Brett Kulak and Artturi Lehkonen.

This could give Kent Hughes an opportunity to hit another home run, like with Ben Chiarot.

Stay tuned!