Nashville Predators: The salary cap situation going forward

It’s everyone’s favorite topic, the salary cap! The Nashville Predators have a much better situation than many other teams, but let’s look to the future.

I know that barely anyone likes to discuss the salary cap situation, but it’s so interesting. Creating a team that can win for years is solely reliant on how the general manager handles it. The Nashville Predators general manager David Poile has recently been hailed as a cap wizard. But why? Well, he’s a betting man. He pays players more than they’re worth at the moment, in the hopes that they’ll fulfill their potential. Once that players fulfills his potential, he’ll be a great player on a somewhat cheap and lengthy contract. It’s most notable with the defense, especially Ryan Ellis, Mattias Ekholm, and Roman Josi. The Nashville Predators have played the cap game well.

We’re about to look into the future, the next three years to be exact. And before we do, I want to cover a few things. Long term injured reserve (LTIR) is what a player is placed on when they’ll miss 24 days and 10 NHL games. By moving a player to LTIR, a team is rewarded with some cap relief. There are also players who are waiver exempt. waiver exempt means that you can travel between the NHL, AHL, or CHL without any risk of being claimed.

All rookies are waiver exempt. Although once a player is returned from the NHL to the CHL, he is unable to return to the NHL until his season is over. That mostly applies in the case of Samuel Girard. Finally, there are buyouts. Buyouts are when a team literally buys a player out of his contract and receives a smaller cap hit than what they would pay.

So for this article, we’re going to go over the Predators potential cap, this is a huge hypothetical and should be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, this is a fun nerdy little piece. So let’s start with the present.