The Calgary Flames are not a salary cap team this season. In fact, they are far from it.
After making their blockbuster trade which brought in both Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee, the team has the second most cap space in the entire NHL.
According to PuckPedia, Calgary sits with $17.5M in projected cap space at the time of writing but it also means they can fit a $43M annual cap hit today or $80M at the deadline. That is a staggering amount of space.
Many teams have looked to weaponize that cap space for teams that are looking to broker deals, but the Flames haven’t yet jumped into that play. In last night’s trade press conference, Craig Conroy confirmed that this may be the year they actually do.
Flames willing to take advantage of their space
Teams are able to have no more than three retained salary spots during the course of a season. The Flames have one of those spots taken up this season and next with money retained from the Jacob Markstrom deal. This means there are two available spots left the team could use.
At his trade press conference Thursday night, when asked about being a third-party broker, Conroy had this to say:
If teams need as the deadline comes, a third party, we’re willing to do that.
That is a big change in thinking for the Flames and was clearly thought about in the trade for Frost and Farabee.
Strategic deals made by Calgary
A big decision the team made was being able to not retain the salary on Andrei Kuzmenko’s deal in the trade with Philadelphia. Had they done this they would be down to one spot, but now have some more options to deal with.
The price of retaining salary has varied over the years. Some teams, like the Flames, have had to attach a first-round pick to send off $6M in salary, while teams like the Blackhawks can only get a third-round pick for retaining half of Mikko Rantanen’s money. At the end of the day, the mid-round pick seems to be the standard.
Act now while they still can
If the Flames are able to add two additional selections at just the cost of salary cap space they aren’t going to use, then it’s a no-brainer. They could look to be a larger broker if a team needs to dump a player, but there don’t appear to be any glaring candidates right now.
With the salary cap about to skyrocket, these types of retained salary deals are going to decrease. Many assumed that the Flames ownership was too cheap to execute these types of deals, but clearly Conroy now has the approval to do so. The team is starting to make a bunch of strong asset management decisions under Conroy, and this would be another win for the franchise’s future.
