In the past 4+ years, there was no way they could have spent to the cap because of the rebuild. Nor should they have. Before that, they were essentially a cap team. After the SC win, they were basically capped out for most of the next decade, to the point that they had to trade McDonald and Kuntiz to remain cap compliant. The re-signed Perry, Getz and Kesler to massive deals.
To the bolded above, most teams not in cup contention don't spend to the cap. That is what you do when rebuilding.
CapWages | NHL Salary Cap Data Look at the list, many big market teams (Philly, NYI, Montreal, Boston, Van, and Calgary) are well below the cap. That is because they are rebuilding.
They took on the Backes contract (1.5 years), McGinn, Trouba, Husso, John Moore, Dumoulin, Fabbri (all bad contracts) and overpaid for Strome/Gudas/Killorn. They tried to acquire Dandonov who was a salary dump at the time. They retained on most of the TDL trades in recent years.
I think its fair to claim Verbeek has not used the ducks excess salary space/retention slots in an ideal manner. But there is no reason to think that's because of an internal cap. Knowing what we do about Verbeek, it seems to be entirely him. And in that regard, its absurd to suggest there's an internal cap when the ducks are spending hundreds of millions of on the team outside of the cap beyond the bad contracts mentioned above.
In terms of coaches salaries, the ducks have hired high profile coaches (BB and RC) and paid them market. They paid Brian Burke top dollar (gm, not as a coach). Eakins and Cronin were certainly less expensive options. But which more expensive high profile coaches would have taken the ducks job during the rebuild? None that I can think of - those coaches all had better options which is why they're highly paid.
