Salary Cap: '24-'25 Salary Thread: Crosbicles Volume MMXXV - Poolman and Poolparty?!?

[canadianguy77]

More than half way through the season and we have two individuals with a positive +-. Lizotte being the only regular.

Quick glance, the only team that beats us is Chicago with one poor soul positive.

They've been blown out 7 times this season. (I count a blowout as a 4 or more goal difference). The good news is that they haven’t suffered a blowout loss since December 10th. The bad news is they only have 2 blowout wins themselves this season. But yeah, they really put themselves in a hole with the +/- in the 1st quarter of the season.

 

[eXile3]

The more I’ve thought about it, the more of a no brainer I think it is to get rid of Jarry via a buyout than retain salary. Jarry’s buyout is weird due to all of the signing bonus money at the end of it, so the yearly money is fairly tame outside of that awful 2025-2026. But with Malkin presumably retiring after next year, do you even care about Jarry’s dead cap at that point?

A Jarry buyout gives them a $1.7 million cap penalty next year and then has an awful $5 million cap penalty in 2025-2026. Beyond those two years, the cap penalty is less than $1 million. Hard to be upset about a Jarry buyout when 5/6 years of the buyout are pretty minimal cap penalties.



He can both give Marner a huge deal while filling out the bottom-6 with young guys and cap dumps, though. You can take Chychrun out of that lineup and replace him with POJ to save an additional $5 million to do that.

It’s not that it can’t happen. It’s that it won’t. Even if we get Marner, which I think is a pipe dream, Sully won’t allow a 3rd line like that.

 

[Empoleon8771]

It’s not that it can’t happen. It’s that it won’t. Even if we get Marner, which I think is a pipe dream, Sully won’t allow a 3rd line like that.

But like what was said, you still have money to play with to add veterans to the bottom-6. They have a ton of cap space going into next year.

 

[Empoleon8771]

If the Penguins were to sign Marner, they could enter next year with this forward group without any additions beyond re-signing Hallander:

Rakell-Crosby-Rust
Bunting-Malkin-Marner
Hallander-Glass-Tomasino
Lizotte-Ponomarev-Acciari
Hayes

Tomasino falls into that "bottom-6 offensive producer" role while their PKers are Ponomarev, Lizotte, Glass, Rust, Acciari and Hallander. They're not really going "youth heavy" in their bottom-6, but the bottom-6 is still fairly young with Acciari being the only guy over 27. In addition it's also very cheap, Glass probably comes in at around $2.5 million again while Hallander and Tomasino probably come in at around $2 million. That bottom-6 is basically just replacing O'Connor, Nieto and Beauvillier with Tomasino, Ponomarev and Hallander.

Honestly I'd even be pretty satisfied with this forward group, it's what they should be doing anyway. Don't spend money on unnecessary bottom-6 forwards, have a few cheap but effective prime aged NHLers surrounded with young guys. It leaves you a bunch of money to address other positions on the roster, namely top-6 C/W and top-4 D.

If you sign Marner for $12.5 million a year and keep the RFAs at reasonable prices, I'm sitting with $7.5 million in cap space with buying out Jarry and having 2 open LD spots (POJ as the 3rd pair RD). The entire McGroarty-Broz-Koivunen line would be starting in WBS, so you have a strong line to call up in case of injuries.