Looking ahead, what might the Blue Jackets cap situation look like next summer?

With the Blue Jackets having finalized short term contract extensions for both Jet Greaves and Cole Sillinger, with one more to go for Adam Fantilli, I wanted to take a few moments to look ahead at what next summer's salary cap situation may look like for the hockey club.

It has been a point of discussion among the Union Blue faithful over the past few days ever since Don Waddell got decent value for both Greaves and Sillinger, albeit on shorter terms than I think he might've wanted.

Using PuckPedia's "PuckGM" feature, we can play around as armchair NHL General Managers to look at what transactions may look like into the future and how other contract extensions may impact the Blue Jackets moving forward.

First, it's important to note this work does not include any outside trade or transactions. The odds of the Jackets not bringing in any outside free agents or making any significant trades for multiyear signed players is slim to none. Second, this assumes that the extended players involved wish to stick around, which in the case of Kirill Marchenko especially, is still up in the air.

You can see from the displays included in my tweet that the Jackets have enough Salary Cap room right now to keep around most of their young core without pushing up right against the cap, based on my very rough extension projections. There is, of course, a caveat to this: I don't believe the Jackets will be able to keep both Kent Johnson and Dmitri Voronkov, and based on the organization's messaging, I would guess Voronkov would be the odd man out in that scenario.

Some teams have expressed interest in the young Russian forward, and I picked Vancouver mostly at random and selected a few assets in return, but trade for Voronkov would likely look much different than what I selected. However, he definitely has some trade value, and the return you'd get back for a big winger like him would make his departure likely easier to stomach.

At this point, really the only "albatross contract" the team would have on the ledgers would be Dante Fabbro, in my opinion, and that is assuming he doesn't swing back into form over the next few seasons. His first few months in Columbus in 2024-25 were stellar, and you have to believe the decent defenseman is still in his game somewhere.

So, this would put the Blue Jackets with around $15m in cap space for the 2028-29 summer, which is the big one when Zach Werenski's deal will be up at the end of that season. This, of course, assumes the cap doesn't go up from $113.5m, which it likely will to an expected $120m, but if it doesn't, the CBJ would likely need to shuffle around some players again to make room for a Werenski extension at that point.

Just like every other team in the NHL, the Jackets will be forced to make a decision on some of their top young players as they come off of ELCs and bridge deals, but after the dealing Don Waddell has done in recent days, I am hopeful they will figure it out and bring a Stanley Cup to Arch City.

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