There is No Asset More Valuable than Cap Space

With the St. Louis Blues tendering offer sheets to two former first-round picks of the Edmonton Oilers in forward Dylan Holloway and defenceman Phillip Broberg yesterday, we see another example of just how brutal a lack of cap space can be for an NHL team.

It also serves to shed some light on the urgency in Ottawa Senators GM Steve Staios' 2024 offseason, in which he traded multiple roster players in return for what most including myself consider to be far less than market value.

Trading winger Mathieu Joseph along with a third-round pick to the Blues stands out as a head-scratcher at first glance, especially since the Blues acquired Radek Faksa, a more expensive and worse player, without getting an extra asset from the Dallas Stars.

Sure, he's struggled in the past since signing a 4-year deal worth $2.95M annually, but he's coming off a 35-point season in which he offered strong defensive play both at even-strength and on the penalty kill. This isn't a contract a team should be desperate to move, so why were the Senators?

After the moves made on July 1st (trading Jakob Chychrun for Nick Jensen and signing David Perron, Mike Amadio and Noah Gregor), the Senators were left with an unsigned Shane Pinto and notably, not enough cap space to sign him to even a one-year deal. There are concerns about Perron's age, but he brings some elements the team needs more of right now – leadership, nastiness, and most importantly, a source of scoring on the power-play. And Amadio appears to be a likely candidate to break out in a bigger role, especially next to Pinto and Ridly Greig. It was all for naught, however, if Pinto wasn't able to be re-signed.

Some might be tripped up still, by the fact that Joseph's performance last season – while inconsistent, was more or less up to par for what he was being paid. Generally, sweeteners (players or picks offered as an incentive for taking on unwanted contracts) are attached to players on bad contracts, and the Senators have been on both sides of the equation over the years.

They acquired Connor Brown, who was a strong middle-six winger in three years with the Sens for taking on an overpaid depth defenseman in Nikita Zaitsev, and a year later took on veterans Braydon Coburn and Cedric Paquette (with a combined 3.35M cap hit) along with a 2nd-round pick in 2022, unloading LTIR-bound Anders Nilsson and Marian Gaborik in the process. I remember a lot of vocal fans criticizing the organization for never making moves like this, but I mean, that's two examples right there.

Conversely, sending Matt Murray to Toronto and flipping Zaitsev to Chicago required moving out a few of their own draft picks.

That said, we've seen cap-strapped teams trade away players on good contracts for little to no value to ensure they have room to pay more valuable players. The biggest example in recent memory is the Max Pacioretty deal in 2022. Vegas was so desperate to move the salary of a point-per-game player, they were also willing to throw in a young right-shot defender in Dylan Coghlan, who had 13 points in 59 games on an $800k salary to sweeten the deal while bringing back nothing in return.

If we change our perspective, the Joseph trade doesn't look as bad. Instead of giving up a pick to move his contract, think of it as moving a pick to avoid having to trade Pinto – or worse, be unable to match an offer sheet. It's certainly not good that the Senators were in a position like that after waltzing on the cap floor only a couple of seasons ago, but that isn't the fault of the current GM.

You could say I'm using Pierre Dorion's tenure as a crutch when evaluating Staios' moves, and that's partly true. I of course don't know what other offers were out there for the players he moved. That said, the underwhelming returns of the Chychrun and Joseph trades were a direct result of there being multiple holes on the roster that needed to be addressed, without the cap space to do so.

Maybe he would've gotten more value for Chychrun had he asked for picks. That wouldn't have fixed the defence. He could've taken those picks and traded for a defensemen, though, or signed an RHD in free agency. But only if that player wanted to come to Ottawa, or didn't have a NTC. There are far too many unknowns here for us to make any assumptions.

The lack of flexibility resulted in Ottawa having to sacrifice value for the sake of attempting to improve the team. With those deals done and in the past, they now have a balanced defence corps and some room to make adjustments as the season goes on. With 12 forwards and 7 defencemen on the roster, they have around $1.9M in cap space, ensuring they won't have to worry about playing a man down at any point during the season.

At the very least, we'll be able to watch a Senators team in 2024-25 that won't be held back by a lack of financial planning.