I\u2019ll say two things for the concept. One, the timing is good, since Dom just finished the heavy lifting of walking us through the league\u2019s best<\/a> and worst<\/a> contracts plus everything in between<\/a>. I really appreciate those pieces every summer because while any idiot<\/a> can pontificate on contracts, it\u2019s nice to have some actual data to back up those opinions.<\/p>\n And second, I do think there\u2019s some value in looking at \u201cbad\u201d contracts that fall a little further down the pay scale. We all focus on the cap hits that look like eight-figure mistakes, and for obvious reasons. But while those types of misses at the top of the lineup can doom a team, so can overpaying on too many depth spots. And as we\u2019re about to see, teams sure do seem to love to do that.<\/p>\n But first, a few ground rules\u2122:<\/p>\n We\u2019re building a 20-man roster of 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies, with no spares because we won\u2019t be able to afford it. All cap and contract info in this piece comes from the fine folks at PuckPedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is going to be ridiculous and way harder than it should be. In other words, perfect summer content. Let\u2019s do this.<\/p>\n Goaltenders<\/p>\n Right off the bat, the conflict driving this whole exercise comes into focus: We want to overspend, but not too much, because we have to save room for all the bad skater contracts to come.<\/p>\n That isn\u2019t a huge issue here, because I\u2019m not sure that any of the biggest goalie contracts are obviously bad. We already said we can\u2019t use Carey Price, while Sergei Bobrovsky only has one year left of his $10 million hit. And while I doubt Igor Shesterkin\u2019s deal will age well, especially without any clear next man up to drive the goalie market forward, I\u2019m not going to spend $11.5 million of my space just so he can win the Vezina next year and make everyone laugh at me.<\/p>\n Moving down the list, Andrei Vasilevskiy was just the Vezina runner-up, Connor Hellebuyck won the Hart and Jake Oettinger\u2019s deal is fine. The first name that at least makes me pause is Jeremy Swayman, coming off a rough first year at $8.25 million, and Juuse Saros at $7.74 million should be even more tempting given I just said it was a bad contract<\/a>. But while the Saros deal is scary, he\u2019s still a very capable NHL starter at the very least, which means we can do better. Well, worse.<\/p>\n In the end, it came down to three names: Tristan Jarry, Elvis Merzlikins and Philipp Grubauer, all of whom have contracts well over $5 million that run for multiple years to come. Of the three, Grubauer is the oldest, the most expensive and has the worst recent numbers, so he\u2019s in. The other two feel like a coin flip with virtually identical contracts, but Jarry wasn\u2019t awful the year before last, while Merzlikins hasn\u2019t had a save percentage over .900 since 2021-22 and costs just a bit more. I\u2019ll go with him, meaning my two goalies are Philipp Grubauer ($5.9 million through 2027) and Elvis Merzlikins ($5.4 million through 2027).<\/p>\n Cap space spent so far: With two players down and 18 to go, I\u2019ve already spent $11.3 million on some very shaky goaltending, leaving me $84.2 million in space.<\/p>\n Elvis Merzlikins allowed 168 goals in 53 games last season for the Blue Jackets. (Claus Andersen \/ Getty Images)Defense<\/p>\n Remember when Erik Karlsson and Drew Doughty signed their mega-contracts way back in 2019 and we all figured they\u2019d reset the blue line market? Six years and one pandemic-inspired flat cap later, they\u2019re still sitting at the top of the defense list, with only Rasmus Dahlin even coming all that close. Doughty and (especially) Karlsson aren\u2019t worth their cap hits these days, but both have only two years left, so I\u2019m not willing to eat a huge chunk of my cap on their deals.<\/p>\n Moving down the list, I did run into two deals that feel like serious candidates for our roster. The first is Darnell Nurse and his $9.25 million cap hit that continues to throw a wrench into the Oilers\u2019 hopes, while the other is the new Ivan Provorov deal at $8.5 million that felt like a case of the Columbus tax taken to extremes<\/a>. I think you could make a strong case that Nurse\u2019s deal is a far bigger problem for his current team, given where the Oilers and Blue Jackets each are in the championship cycle. But for our purposes, Provorov has three additional years to worry about on a seven-year deal, so I\u2019ll take him and save a bit of space in the process. Ivan Provorov is our top defenseman. And I\u2019ll pair him with Brady Skjei, whose seven-year, $7 million UFA deal with the Predators already looks awful just one year in.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a top pair that will cost us north of $15 million, so we\u2019ll have to go a bit cheaper on the other options. Luckily, we have plenty of options, because GMs love middling blueliners. We could look to Detroit for Ben Chiarot or Justin Holl, but both those deals expire next year. Kevin Bahl is at least worth a look, but at 25 he\u2019s got enough upside to defend that deal. Instead, I decided to go with a pair of $4.5 million UFAs: Cody Ceci, who signed with the Kings this summer for four years, and Ryan Graves, entering year three of a six-year deal in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n For our bottom pair, there are still plenty of bad deals out there to choose from. But with some of the league\u2019s worst contracts going to forwards, I feel like we want to save our cap space as much as possible. Can you go cheap on bad contracts? In theory, no, but here we are. Give me Carolina\u2019s Sean Walker and his four more years at $3.6 million, and the Islanders\u2019 Scott Mayfield, who has them on the hook for $3.5 million for another five years.<\/p>\n Cap space spent so far: We just added six defensemen at a cap cost of $31.6 million, an average just north of $5.25 million each. With our two goalies, that brings our team total to $42.9 million, leaving $52.6 million to spend on 12 forwards. That\u2019s\u2026 not a lot, actually. We\u2019re going to face a cap crunch up front. What a completely unforeseeable problem.<\/p>\n Forwards<\/p>\n The temptation is to dive right into the league\u2019s worst deals, but I know from last time that won\u2019t work. The key up front is going to be finding bad contracts that are also reasonably cheap, which of course is ridiculous but here we are. So rather than starting with my top line, I\u2019m going to do this backwards and chip away at the depth first.<\/p>\n So how\u2019s this for a fourth line: Tampa\u2019s Yanni Gourde between Utah\u2019s Brandon Tanev and Montreal\u2019s Jake Evans. The good news is this line only costs us about $7.7 million: $2.33 million for Gourde, $2.5 million for Tanev and $2.85 million for Evans. The bad news is these three combined for just 28 goals last year \u2014 and the worse news is we\u2019re on the hook to this bunch for 13 total years, six of them to Gourde. Oh, and two of those guys are already 33.<\/p>\n That group works well enough for our purposes, so let\u2019s move up and try the same approach on the third line. We\u2019ll start with a player the Maple Leafs traded for this summer in Dakota Joshua, who still has three years left on a deal that carries a $3.25 million hit. He\u2019ll have a pair of $3 million wingers in the Blue Jackets\u2019 Mathieu Olivier, who\u2019s just starting a new six-year deal, and the Islanders\u2019 Pierre Engvall, who somehow still has five years left on that seven-year extension that I could have sworn he signed a decade ago. That\u2019s north of $9 million for three forwards coming off a year that saw them combine for 61 points, over half of those by Olivier.<\/p>\n Pierre Engvall signed a seven-year extension on July 1, 2023. (Bruce Bennett \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\nWe\u2019re using the 2025-26 cap ceiling of $95.5 million. We\u2019re worried about cap hit, not the actual dollars paid out. And as with any bad contract, term matters \u2013 a deal that\u2019s too expensive for a long time might be worse than one that\u2019s way too expensive for just one more year.
\nWe can\u2019t get relief from LTIR, or burying deals in the minors, or retained salary, or deferred payments. We carry the full cap hit cost of every player.
\nWe won\u2019t use anyone who technically has a valid contract but is no longer an active NHL player, like Carey Price or Logan Couture. Beyond that, we\u2019ll assume everyone is healthy and ready to play.
\nAs always with this sort of thing, a \u201cbad\u201d contract means it\u2019s bad from a team perspective, not the player. See the intro to that 2019 piece for how I feel about that, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2208153354-scaled.jpg\")
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