I think the possibility of an offer sheet is something the Canucks have to regain some flexibility to guard against, even though right now nobody is likely planning an offer sheet. The problem comes if the Canucks lose the ability to match if they sign Hughes first.
Right now the Canucks are looking at the possibility of signing Hughes long term and Pettersson to a bridge.
Above we saw
@Favin predict an $8.35 million cap hit for Hughes. Let's go with that as an example for now.
I have a spread sheet with the Canucks roster and cap hits. It involves a few assumptions about who makes the team, but realistically there isn't a lot of room to change it as the players on the bubble aren't paid all that differently. The biggest opportunity to play with it would be to keep a roster of fewer than 23 players.
My spreadsheet has the Canucks $16.789 million * under the salary cap. That would leave them $16.789 million for Hughes, Pettersson and whatever extra they need through the year to deal with short term absences due to injuries and illnesses that they don't get long term injury relief for, as well as the occasional absence on compassionate grounds.
Let's assume the Canucks announce tomorrow that they have signed Hughes to a deal at the amount
@Favin hypothesized. That would leave the Canucks with just under $8.44 million for Pettersson and whatever margin they need for short term absences.
At that stage, knowing the Canucks are not in a position to match, a team with cap room might very well decide to offer Pettersson a deal at $9 or $10 million, with the Canucks unable to match. The Canucks would have just under a week to find some way to very quickly dump salary.
Normally a team could clear enough space by trading a lower paid player at a discount.
The Canucks have a lot of players who are paid more than their market value. At the beginning of the season, it might be tough to give them away without throwing in as a sweetener significant additional value. It also would be difficult to do without Benning openly doing something he's claimed he would not do, give away assets in order to dump payroll.
The point is, cap flexibility does matter. Signing Hughes to a long term deal before signing EP would take away much of the little cap flexibility Benning has left.
* Assumed roster of (F) Boeser, Horvat, Miller, Garland, Pearson, Dickinson, Motte, Sutter, Podkolzin, Hoglander, MacEwen, Highmore, (D) OEL, Myers, Hamonic, Poolman, Rathbone, Schenn, Juolevi, (G) Demko, Halak, with Hughes and Pettersson to come. For discussion purposes Ferland has been disregarded, though the need to get as close to the cap as possible with him on the roster before putting him on injured reserve the first day of the season so as to maximize long term injury relief puts additional pressure on Benning to get his free agents signed before the season starts. Without Pettersson and Hughes, the Canucks aren't going very close to the $81.5 million salary cap even including Ferland.
