Capfriendly says $10,018,333 below the cap currently with Scheifele already paid. Only big deal to be made is with Trouba currently, and then Stafford's $4,350,000 is likely gone after next season either by the TDL or he potentially walks. Thorburn's likely done as well when his contract is up and that's another $1,200,000 after the upcoming season. Then you have Pavelec's $3,900,000 which is almost certainly to be gone after next season. This leaves Dano, Hellebuyck, Copp and Burmistrov to re-up the following year should we not lose any of them to Vegas.
So we're likely parting with $9,450,000 from Stafford, Thorburn and Pavs by next off season with the guys up for renewal being Burmistrov, Copp, Postma, Chiarot, Dano, Kosmachuk, Hellebuyck, Howden, and Olsen. All of them are depth right now with Dano and Hellebuyck being the only ones with a good upside. It's the following years off season that we have some interesting decisions to make with Little, Lowry, Armia, Ehlers, Enstrom, Stuart (probably retires $2,625,000 AAV), and then from our current farm we have decisions to make on the futures of Morrissey, Petan, De Leo, Kostalek, Phillips, Lodge, Comrie, Melchiori, and Blomqvist assuming Vegas doesn't poach any of them. That will be the year we need to have cap space the most as we might still need guys like Little or Enstrom and Ehlers will surely command a raise as well as Morrissey and Comrie should they continue improving. Who knows what happens to the rest of that depth? The following year you have Wheeler, Laine, Connor, Myers, and Lemieux up for new contracts.
I hope that some people can begin to grasp the reasoning behind why the Jets aren't spending to the cap right now and why it's important to the teams future that they let a great leader on the team like Ladd go. The future they've been building is coming, and it won't come cheap.