There has been a lot of consternation on social media over the last week or so because of the Columbus Blue Jackets salary cap situation. Some of these concerns started to come about shortly after the Brandon Saad deal was signed and then hit a fever pitch after Matt Calvert signed his deal. Aaron Portzline wrote a solid piece about the situation (readable here):
"According to NHLnumbers.com, the Blue Jackets have the most expensive group of forwards in the NHL, with 13 signed to contracts that will pay $45.9 million for the 2015-16 season."
That is an impressive number. First of all let’s take a moment to appreciate this for what it shows to Blue Jackets fans. As a small market team we do not have some of the issues faced by other teams, looking at you Ottawa. The Blue Jackets are not working with an “internal” salary cap like some teams. The way this team has signed players, and with how they handled the Horton contract, it seems that ownership has setup this team to be able to pay to the cap and not a penny more.
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But I digress. For the fans who are worried that the Columbus Blue Jackets are going to get themselves into cap trouble and won’t be able to retain all of their talent let me help you out with some reality. They won’t be able to keep all of this talent. Accept this. This team will not look the same in a year or two.
As I consult generalfanager.com (my cap tool of choice) the first thing I notice is that the Blue Jackets have five restricted free agents after this upcoming season and that the only contract leaving the books is Rene Borque. Next year expect a little bit of a cap crunch that could see some of the young talent such as Cam Atkinson or Matt Calvert to be traded.
This is the nature of having talent in a salary cap league we can’t keep it all. Sometimes we are on the good side of this, getting Bradon Saad and other times it will mean that we have to trade away players we love. As long as the team on the whole keeps getting better, we can be optomistic about the future.
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