The Ottawa Senators have now attended to their main offseason priorities with the re-signings of Mike Hoffman and Cody Ceci, so an updated look at their payroll situation is in order.
With a salary cap of $73 million, the Senators are going to sit well under the cap. As of now, their total payroll accounts for about $67 million for the 2016-2017 season.
They still have a cushion of about $6 million if they want to make any more transactions, but Eugene Melnyk has emphasized in the past about how he feels as though the team spends enough money to be competitive without getting too close to the cap.
They’re also set up nicely to attend to their upcoming batch of free agents next offseason. In total, about $9 million is going to come off the books in expiring contracts next offseason.
A few of the free agents probably won’t be back. Chris Neil and Chris Kelly are seemingly very likely to retire.
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Between the two of them, that’s $2.4 million freed up. Depth guys like Matt Puempel, Mike Kostka, and Ryan Dzingel are going to be in somewhat of an audition this season to remain on the team in the future. Their statuses are unpredictable right now.
Between that trio, that’s $2.45 million in contracts off the books. The prioritized free agents are probably going to be Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Zack Smith, and Curtis Lazar.
Smith is an unrestricted free agent, while Pageau and Lazar are set to be restricted free agents. If no more moves get done this offseason, then the Senators’ front office will have about $15 million in cap space to sign players next offseason.
It’s a slightly misleading figure, though, because Melnyk isn’t going to use up all that space. Also if trends continue, the cap is going to increase to about $75 million for the 2017-2018 season.
Taking all of those details into account, the Senators are probably going to have something closer to $10 million to logistically spend that offseason. Assuming that Neil and Kelly are gone, that’s 6 players to consider re-signing with that $10 million.
Pageau, Smith, and Lazar will probably be attended to first. Whatever of that $10 million is left over can possibly be spent on Dzingel, Puempel, and Kostka if any of that trio is in their future plans.
Of course, there’s also free agents they might want to bring in from other teams, but basically they’re probably going to have somewhere around $10 million to spend in improving the roster via free agency, whether that’s re-signing players or acquiring new ones.
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They’re going to have the flexibility to bring back the players they want to retain, and it’s more solidified now that Hoffman and Ceci are officially on the books.