The issue is space beyond 24/25. The Sabres have real cap trouble given RFAs and UFAs in 25 and 26. If they were to bring in someone at at $5m+ beyond this year.what I mean is what happened with edmonton where someone OS at 2nd round rate on Quinn or peterka
That has been thoroughly debunked. With a moderate increase to the cap every year (lets say 3%), any issues are essentially washed away. You can give 7M deals long term to Byram, Quinn, and Peterka AND a 3M bridge to Levi, that puts you at ~89M cap with 17 players signed.
Move on from Krebs, puts you at 87.5 with the only trouble area is RHD for the 2nd pair, which is a problem we already have.
The real key is...don't try to lock down every player who smells success at an NHL level to a 7+ year deal and you have plenty of cash and flexibility.
Unless Quinn/Peterka put out real top line production, bridge them and be ready to move on if one of our younger cheaper wingers is ready.
Levi is a 10.2 RFA with no rights....bridge him to a 2 year deal at 1.5M. Byram isn't going to get elite PP time, so he's not going to get the numbers to demand a big deal in arb. Sign him to a smaller deal.
Projecting every player out needs a long term big ticket is silly. You already have 2 d-men signed to giant deals...its ok to walk Byram to UFA.
The only way we run into cap space problems is if Kevyn creates them by trying to lock down every player to long term deals if they sniff RFA.