rebuilding teams spend to the cap now?
When you’re paying several buy outs and have an aging goalie, Marc Staal and Brendan Smith on large contracts, you tend to be near the Cap and not be that great. Counting Staal who isn’t dressed and the buyout money alone, how much cap space is that? Nearly 13M, spent on players not in the lineup and we have 2.7M in cap space. That’s 15.5M “below” the cap. 8.5M for Hank. 4.35M for Smith. That’s how you spend to the cap and ice a bad team.
Hank, Staal, Smith, buyouts and existing cap space comes out to 28M.