The Blue Jackets released their opening night roster on Monday, just in the nick of time. With seconds to spare, they made the big blockbuster deal with the Maple Leafs, shuffling their entire cap situation just before rosters were due.
On Tuesday, they made another move: signing defenseman Carson Soucy. This is one we were anticipating for the last several days, but it had to wait until the bigger deal was made. When this one was announced, the first thing I noticed was the interesting cap hit.
From my perspective, it sure looks like Don Waddell and the Blue Jackets dug deep into their pocket books for loose change here. Soucy signed a one-year, $1.15 million dollar deal. Notably, it's not a flat $1 million. It's not $1.5 million. It's not even $1.25 million. How in the heck did they come to agree upon this amount?
The salary cap dictated the AAV.
This deal seems to have required some real salary cap gymnastics. Soucy stood out in camp, and became a much-needed addition as the team continues to uncover injuries to their blue line.
Expected out of the lineup are veterans Damon Severson (week-to-week), Dante Fabbro (4-6 weeks), and potentially Ivan Provorov, who was undergoing further evaluation yesterday. This means that, even after acquiring a defenseman in the big trade on Monday, the Jackets were likely going to have to lean upon Jake Christiansen to play as their #5 guy on opening night.
For that reason, Waddell simply had no choice. They had to find a way to fit Soucy into this roster, and it seems like both sides found a way to make it work. On the open market, I could see this player getting a little bit better of a deal-but, he might have been signed as a #7 defenseman.
In Columbus, he'll get a real opportunity to play, likely immediately becoming a top-four option to start the year, and tapering off as guys start to get back into the lineup. For him, the Blue Jackets make a lot of sense, as he will get a chance to re-establish his game in the NHL.
With that opportunity, he took what feels like a little bit of a discount-but, he still managed to squeeze this team for all he could. Why do I believe that? Well, consider this: that $1.15 million dollar deal puts this team $150k away from the NHL's salary cap.
That's not insignificant, because the corresponding move was placing center Isac Lundestrom on LTIR. His contract is worth $1.3 million dollars, and it's not hard to do the math here. The team will accrue around $185k per month while he's on LTIR. He's expected to miss roughly the first month of the season.
So, the plan seems to be this: use the lineup in hand right now, with Soucy on board. Accrue nearly $200k of LTIR relief against the cap. Once Lundestrom returns, demoting Danton Heinen's $1 million dollar contract, should net them enough space to activate Isac from IR and still be under the cap.
Make sense? Yeah, I have a hard time understanding it, also. Thank goodness I don't have to do this for a living.
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