Once again, back to back terrible outings from the Oilers has sparked turmoil in Edmonton. There is a lot of pressure to make the playoffs from within the organization and from fans, but the Oilers continue to be consistently inconsistent. The injuries on the back end have really hampered the Oilers, but the reality is that the roster isn’t good enough for a playoff spot right now.
TSN’s Ryan Rishaug’s tweet from last week said that the Oilers staff are in a “full court press” and have been deployed “en masse” to find a scoring forward. He also hinted that the Oilers’ 2019 1st round pick and a young, developing forward are in play. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman has confirmed that the 1st round pick is in play and that Jesse Puljujarvi could be in play as well, although Bob Mackenzie and others in the local media have since reported that the Oilers aren’t interested in moving Puljujarvi.
As many fans are aware, the Oilers don’t have a lot of cap space to work with, so acquiring a big-name scorer isn’t going to be simple. However, the thing that most people don’t realize is that a team is only stuck with a portion of the new player’s cap hit based on the number of days that he would be on the roster in the current season. If you go to a player’s page on CapFriendly.com, you see four values at the top. You see their Cap Hit, their Daily Cap Hit (their salary cap hit divided by the number of days in the season, which is 186 this year), their Accumulated Daily Cap Hit (their Daily Cap Hit multiplied by the number of days that have passed in the current season), and their Remaining Daily Cap Hit (their Daily Cap Hit multiplied by how many days are left in the season).
That Accumulated Daily Cap Hit is a total of the salary cap hit that has already been paid. Once it has been paid for by the team, it can’t be transferred to another team in a trade. So, if the Oilers were trading Cam Talbot today, then the Oilers would have $2.49 million counting towards their cap for the remainder of the season because that time has already passed. It would save them $1.68 million against the cap. His new team would be stuck with the Remaining Daily Cap Hit for the remainder of the season. That is why teams are able to add players with large cap hits at the trade deadline. The Remaining Daily Cap Hit is small enough for most teams to be able to absorb without going over the cap because there are so few days remaining once the deadline hits.
The Total Cap Hit number you would see on the Oilers page on CapFriendly.com is a sum of the total cap hits for each player on the active roster. It does not include the Accumulated Daily Cap Hit for having Ryan Strome, Chris Wideman, Jason Garrison, Drake Caggiula, and Valentin Zykov on the roster for however many days. It also does not include the subtracted Accumulated Daily Cap Hit for the time that Alex Petrovic and Brandon Manning were not on the roster.
This information is vital when we are looking at what the Oilers can afford to do prior to this deadline. It also provides some clarity on why Colby Cave was claimed on waivers. Cave’s total cap hit is $675k, but he was acquired with 82 days left in the season, making his total salary cap hit for the Oilers only $298k. The Oilers sent Joseph Gambardella down the AHL to make room for Cave on the active roster. Gambardella’s cap hit is $725k. That full amount would be taken off of the salary cap total because he did not switch NHL teams this season. The move created $0.427M in cap space for the Oilers, which will be needed if they really want to add a top scorer. They just need to hope that Cave can bring a solid game while he’s here.
It’s an interesting situation in Edmonton because…
If you’d like to hear why the situation in Edmonton is so interesting CLICK HERE. You’ll be treated to a very informative look into how the Oilers could maximize their trading potential to upgrade the roster with minimal asset usage.
