When teams find themselves in the throes of a rebuild, there often isn\u2019t a desire to spend toward the upper end of the salary cap.\u00a0 With little to no hope of playoff revenue and the challenges associated with filling the home arena up to watch a group that isn\u2019t playoff-bound, it\u2019s understandable that there would be a desire to try to keep costs down.<\/p>\n
It appears that\u2019s where the Canucks find themselves at the moment.\u00a0 After rebuilding their coaching staff with what\u2019s believed to be well-below-market-value contracts to limit spending, the team is also trying to do the same on the player front.\u00a0 Postmedia\u2019s Patrick Johnston reports<\/a> that ownership is hoping to trim around $20MM off its payroll bill compared to a season ago.<\/p>\n It should be noted that they\u2019re more than halfway to that point at the moment.\u00a0 Between some salary drops on their existing contracts (such as Jake DeBrusk<\/a> and Filip Hronek<\/a>) and the departures of some key veterans, Johnston notes that they\u2019re down around $12MM from the end of last season.\u00a0 That\u2019s a strong start toward meeting that payroll objective but finding the other $8MM to shave will be trickier.<\/p>\n As things stand, there are only two Vancouver players who have a salary that high for the upcoming season.\u00a0 One is embattled center Elias Pettersson<\/a> who continues to be part of trade speculation while the other is winger Brock Boeser<\/a>.\u00a0 New GM Ryan Johnson has indicated<\/a> that they\u2019re not looking to just clear money if they move Pettersson although presumably, they\u2019d take back less money than what they sent out in a trade if they do wind up moving him.<\/p>\n Boeser wouldn\u2019t necessarily be an easy player to trade either.\u00a0 On top of having full no-trade protection, he carries a $7.25MM AAV through the 2031-32 season and has only reached the 60-point mark once in his 10-year NHL career.\u00a0 He has been more of a 20-goal, 50-point player over the last couple of years and that type of production isn\u2019t a great return on that price tag.\u00a0 DeBrusk has also been subject to trade speculation but with five years at $5.5MM for an AAV left on his deal coming off a season in which he scored four even-strength goals, cutting his money off the books entirely won\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a situation where all the savings have to be in place now, either.\u00a0 Speculatively, some veterans on expiring contracts (including Brendan Gallagher<\/a>, Drew O\u2019Connor<\/a>, Filip Chytil<\/a>, and recent signings Paul Cotter<\/a> and Luke Schenn<\/a>) will probably be moved before the March 5th trade deadline.\u00a0 Moving some of those players will yield some cost savings, though certainly not enough to make up the remaining $8MM that they\u2019re hoping to trim.\u00a0 But it will help.<\/p>\n It will be interesting to see if this goal of a $20MM payroll cut is a guideline or a hard target to meet as that could influence how aggressive Johnson looks to clear salary in the coming weeks and months.\u00a0 Meanwhile, they will still be cap-compliant to the spending floor if they do as they\u2019re more than $9MM above the $76.9MM floor, per PuckPedia<\/a>.\u00a0 There\u2019s room for them to further trim their payroll spending.\u00a0 Just how fast they\u2019ll wind up doing so remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When teams find themselves in the throes of a rebuild, there often isn\u2019t a desire to spend toward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82,452],"class_list":["post-812990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-vancouver-canucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}