Sure. Let say Frank Seravalli’s prediction is correct that Bouchard makes 10M. Nurse is 9.25M. You need to round out that defense with a legit top 2 dman to partner with Bouchard. You need likely 2 top 4 D men(Nurse has been playing bottom 2 since March). 20M of the cap is already eaten up. You predicted the cap going up which also means the cost of defensemen go up. Leon and Connor will get new contracts. Having two big paycheques on your D while having Connor and Leon is seriously going to hamper your ability to build both a strong forward group and strong defence.
Say Nurse magically becomes a number 2.
Bouchard-Nurse ->20M
#3 - # 4 -> 12M
32M on a decent defense and you still have 97/29 to sign. Hyman and Nuge close to 11M. How are you going to find wingers for Connor and Leon? You also have Skinner coming due.
He won’t. He’s been trending in the opposite way. He also can’t move the puck.
For me the big crunch is next year. After that the cap should start to open up unless someone like Broberg takes a massive step forward. Lets look at next year.
We don't know what the cap will be but it was projected to be $92M before the cap rose this year. With Utah likely to beat Arizona revenues by $60M that alone would add $1M to the cap. So assuming revenues go as expected my guess right now is that the NHL and NHLPA will agree to something like $93.5M but it probably should be higher. At that number if you take off the $2.3M in dead cap you have $91.2M to spend.
We don't know what Leon will get but I think $13.5M is pretty close. The other big unknown of course is Bouchard. One of the reasons that they have not even contemplated signing him is that they are probably waiting to see what all three of Leon Holloway and Broberg get before deciding how to proceed with Bouchard. They have flexibility in terms of term. At 8 years he probably gets $10M if he comes close to duplicating this year. But they could also go short with him. Something like 3 years at $8.5M. They could even take their chances with arbitration. We have Hughes at $7.85M, Makar at $9.0M at $8,45M on their second deal. Dahlin is at $11M but it was his third contract. His second contract was $6M x 3. So lets say the number is $9M.
Broberg and Holloway are important contracts. I suspect the Oilers want to go 2 years for both. Lets try $1.1M for Holloway and $1.3M for Broberg:
My guess is that they will go with a 21 or 22 man roster. Here is what this could look like with the current roster:
Nuge (5.125) McDavid (12.5) Hyman (5.5)
Kane (5.125) Draisaitl (13.5) Arvidsson (4.0)
Holloway (1.1) Henrique (3) Savoie (.887)
Janmark (1.4) xxx yyy
Ekhollm (6) Bouchard (9)
Nurse (9.5) Broberg (1.3)
Kulak (2.7) zzz
Skinner (2.6)
Pickard (1)
That's $84.237M leaving you with about $7M to fill out the rest of the roster and for a cushion. They also have the possibility to move out Kane and or Kulak if they want to go with a more proven RHD. It's not ideal, and would be better if Nurse was at $7.5M of course. But it is doable.
The next year I expect that the cap will take a jump of say $5.5M. I think they could probably re-sign Ekholm for something like $5M x 3. with Kane, Arvidsson, Henrique and Kulak off the books they have almost $23M for raises for McDavid, Skinner, Broberg and Holloway as well as to replace Kulak, Henrique, Arvidsson and Kane. Lets say those raises are McDavid (2), Skinner (2.5) Broberg (3), Holloway (1.5). That leaves you at least $13M to replace Kane who is by then a third line winger, Henrique, Arvidsson and Kulak. Assuming Kulak is replaced internally with someone making (1M), Savoie could be a key here: If he turns out you could go:
Hyman McDavid Savoie
Nuge Draisaitl (6)
Holloway (4) (2)
Beyond that year you are pretty much in the open. The only potential big deal could be Savoie if he really takes off but it is not so likely that we would be looking at anything big for him until 28-29 at the earliest when Nurse's deal is off the books.
Lots of assumptions here of course, but I don't think any are really all that unreasonable and the cap could even go higher more quickly if revenues continue to grow at there recent pace. (The NHL is targeting $10B by the end of the decade). Like every contender in the cap era a tight cap would mean compromises.