Washington Capitals: How to get under the salary cap

The Washington Capitals have until the end of training camp to fix their cap space.

The Washington Capitals had a successful draft and made some good moves in free agency. Things were looking good so far until it got to re-signing Christian Djoos and Chandler Stephenson. As you may recall, each player filed for arbitration.

The case of Djoos reached the courtroom where a neutral arbitrator awarded him a one-year, $1.25 million contract. Stephenson on the other hand, him and the Caps agreed to a deal of one-year and $1.05 million. There’s two differences between both of those figures.

Djoos got a raise of up to $635,000. Stephenson’s deal is a little more shady as far as the future goes, as NBC Sports Washington’s J.J. Regan noted that Stephenson could be on thin ice and that his new contract is $25,000 under $1.075 million. Why does that matter? If Stephenson gets sent to the Hershey Bears following training camp, that means Stephenson’s full salary can come off the books.

Here’s a more detailed explanation from Regan’s story on how this process works:

When a player on an NHL contract gets sent to the AHL, it does not automatically mean his entire salary is suddenly taken off the team’s salary cap. Instead, teams get only a limited amount of relief as dictated by the CBA. The formula to determine cap relief is the league minimum salary plus $375,000. For 2019-20 with a league minimum of $700,000, that means the maximum amount of cap relief a team can get for sending a contract to the AHL is $1.075 million.

Stephenson’s $1.05 million is exactly the number that would come off the Capitals’ books if they decide to indeed send him to Hershey. The Capitals are $1.3 million over the cap and some fans are suggesting a possible salary dump on either player via trade. In my opinion, the best solution for the Capitals to get under the salary cap wouldn’t be to trade Christian Djoos or Chandler Stephenson. I would send Stephenson to Hershey and recall Vitek Vanecek to backup Braden Holtby. Losing Djoos for nothing could backfire, especially since a big problem with his play his second year came from the injury.

Copley’s cap hit is $1,100,000 for the next three seasons while Vanecek will make $716,667. Nothing against Copley but if Washington hopes to extend either one of Backstrom or Holtby’s deals, General Manager Brian MacLellan has to be smart about this. Copley could be placed on waivers and either clear and get back to Hershey or get claimed by another team. Even if the Capitals lost Copley, there’s still plenty of goalies in the fold.

A tight budget has been the biggest challenge for MacLellan the last couple seasons but so far he’s excelled in his last five seasons.