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Too much cap room committed to goaltending?


danaimo

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Listening to hockey "experts" and reading various articles , there seems to be a belief out there that the Canucks cannot possibly go into next season with Luongo and Schneider because it is too much cap room committed to one position. Mike Gillis has repeatedly stated that this is something he would be prepared to do if necessary. Maybe it's just GM posturing, but how absurd is it?

The Canucks have $9.3m committed to goaltending next season. The next highest team to commit to that position is Boston at $8.5m. The average is about $6m with Toronto committing a massive $1.8m. When the total cap is over $70m, the Canucks position is not so bad.

http://stats.nhlnumbers.com/teams

The BOS number is interesting because this $8.5m is essentially for Rask alone because Thomas has stated that he wants to take a year off. They may have to sign another goalie giving then a hit of about $9.5m for a starter and a backup, as opposed to the Canucks that commit $9.3m for 2 starters.

The Cauncks have committed 13.8% of their salary cap to goaltending. When expressed as a percentage of team cap they sit 4th in the league, behind NSH - 15.7%, NYI - 15.5% and NYR - 14.3%.

All of these teams have a huge amount of cap committed to a single player, Rinne, DiPietro and Lundqvist. The Canucks position is not quite as absurd as many suppose as they are committed to 2 starters not just 1 starter ( or in NYI case not even that) . Dipietro has averaged 12 games per year in the last 4 years!!

The only negative impact of overcommitting to goaltending is that it restricts a teams ability to sign free agents or trade for other players. If you believe that the VAN position to be untenable, what would you use any freed up cap space for? The only UFA worth going after would be Shane Doan and landing him is far from garenteed. I can't help believe that if he wanted to come to VAN, that MG would sign him and worry about the cap implications later. There is probably nothing else worth freeing the cap space for.

Freeing up the cap space is easy. Finding a high quality player to spend the money on is the real challenge.

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i think lou and schneids will be our tandem nest season. at least for a little while. teams will realize there goaltending doesnt cut it.(reimer, lindback, crawford etc...) and will be willing to offer closer to gillis's asking price. personally im fine with having these guys in net next sason. im not worried about the cap situation. we have 2mill in cap space. we trade ballard away we have 6mill in cap space. gillis isnt stupid he can find a way to move around the cap.

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Listening to hockey "experts" and reading various articles , there seems to be a belief out there that the Canucks cannot possibly go into next season with Luongo and Schneider because it is too much cap room committed to one position. Mike Gillis has repeatedly stated that this is something he would be prepared to do if necessary. Maybe it's just GM posturing, but how absurd is it?

The Canucks have $9.3m committed to goaltending next season. The next highest team to commit to that position is Boston at $8.5m. The average is about $6m with Toronto committing a massive $1.8m. When the total cap is over $70m, the Canucks position is not so bad.

http://stats.nhlnumbers.com/teams

The BOS number is interesting because this $8.5m is essentially for Rask alone because Thomas has stated that he wants to take a year off. They may have to sign another goalie giving then a hit of about $9.5m for a starter and a backup, as opposed to the Canucks that commit $9.3m for 2 starters.

The Cauncks have committed 13.8% of their salary cap to goaltending. When expressed as a percentage of team cap they sit 4th in the league, behind NSH - 15.7%, NYI - 15.5% and NYR - 14.3%.

All of these teams have a huge amount of cap committed to a single player, Rinne, DiPietro and Lundqvist. The Canucks position is not quite as absurd as many suppose as they are committed to 2 starters not just 1 starter ( or in NYI case not even that) . Dipietro has averaged 12 games per year in the last 4 years!!

The only negative impact of overcommitting to goaltending is that it restricts a teams ability to sign free agents or trade for other players. If you believe that the VAN position to be untenable, what would you use any freed up cap space for? The only UFA worth going after would be Shane Doan and landing him is far from garenteed. I can't help believe that if he wanted to come to VAN, that MG would sign him and worry about the cap implications later. There is probably nothing else worth freeing the cap space for.

Freeing up the cap space is easy. Finding a high quality player to spend the money on is the real challenge.

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Good read.

The 'experts' are reaching for a story in a very long offseason that could get longer with a lockout.

MG stated that he will trade Luo if the players offered are fair value coming this way.

The good thing is that we have strong goaltending and there is no use breaking them up just for a mediocre return....the deal has to make sense and the Canucks end up a stronger team as a result. I hope that we start the season with both Luo and Schneider with Schneider as the #1 goalie.

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It's not necessary per se, but since you can only play one goalie at a time, and since management would surely like to upgrade the blueline and 2nd-line wing spots, and the cap situation is kind of crunchy right now, and if we want to sign Doan we need the cap relief, and just because so many people expect and want it done, that's the way the wind is blowing.

I still say that because of the principle "buy low, sell high," Schneider is the guy who should be on the block if anyone is. I also say it'd be dumb to do anything before the CBA is negotiated and the season actually gets underway. I like how careful Gillis is being about this, he's done a good job ignoring the hoopla.

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If doan signs with us, then yes it is a must to move one right now just to fit under the cap.

That being said, if he does not sign with us were fine going into the season with both. Getting rid of one will be a must by the deadline to improve our team for the playoffs. I don't see us having any problem getting to the playoffs with the team we have now though. I'm with gillis on this one, patience is the key.

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Listening to hockey "experts" and reading various articles , there seems to be a belief out there that the Canucks cannot possibly go into next season with Luongo and Schneider because it is too much cap room committed to one position. Mike Gillis has repeatedly stated that this is something he would be prepared to do if necessary. Maybe it's just GM posturing, but how absurd is it?

The Canucks have $9.3m committed to goaltending next season. The next highest team to commit to that position is Boston at $8.5m. The average is about $6m with Toronto committing a massive $1.8m. When the total cap is over $70m, the Canucks position is not so bad.

http://stats.nhlnumbers.com/teams

The BOS number is interesting because this $8.5m is essentially for Rask alone because Thomas has stated that he wants to take a year off. They may have to sign another goalie giving then a hit of about $9.5m for a starter and a backup, as opposed to the Canucks that commit $9.3m for 2 starters.

The Cauncks have committed 13.8% of their salary cap to goaltending. When expressed as a percentage of team cap they sit 4th in the league, behind NSH - 15.7%, NYI - 15.5% and NYR - 14.3%.

All of these teams have a huge amount of cap committed to a single player, Rinne, DiPietro and Lundqvist. The Canucks position is not quite as absurd as many suppose as they are committed to 2 starters not just 1 starter ( or in NYI case not even that) . Dipietro has averaged 12 games per year in the last 4 years!!

The only negative impact of overcommitting to goaltending is that it restricts a teams ability to sign free agents or trade for other players. If you believe that the VAN position to be untenable, what would you use any freed up cap space for? The only UFA worth going after would be Shane Doan and landing him is far from garenteed. I can't help believe that if he wanted to come to VAN, that MG would sign him and worry about the cap implications later. There is probably nothing else worth freeing the cap space for.

Freeing up the cap space is easy. Finding a high quality player to spend the money on is the real challenge.

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We don't need to deal one of our goalie right now, even if everybody know Schneider have a lot of skills, nobody know if he will do the job on the long run, so keeping Luongo isn't a bad thing. No matter what all of you can think, Luongo is a competitor and he's still #1 material in the NHL, so for the first time of his career he can be great at day #1 of the season, maybe he will be better than Schneider and instead of trading Luongo with his huge contract we could trade Schneider and get more in return.

We are a team that is going to make the playoff for sure, so we don't need to do a quick trade to get a foward or a d-man right now that will have a important role to be sure we will finish 8th in our conference. More we take our time more we will get in the trade and more we will be sure to do the right thing.

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I watched a press conference where Boston's assistant GM quite glumly acknowledged they were farked if Thomas decided to sit out.

On the Island, Dipietro has been declared healthy. Last year, it would be like us assuming we could sign Salo (which we did) but not count his cap? :sick:

Thomas signed his deal a few weeks before his 35rg b-day, so if he does not play Boston will have 3.5 tied up and needing to sign a back up.

If Dipietro misses so much time his cap hit would be very small because he is on LTIR for a good portion of the season.

Rinne and Lundqvist are worth spending that type of money because without either of them their teams would go absolutely nowhere and are in zero danger of becoming a backup.

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Next season:

Boston: Thomas/Rask = $8.5M cap space

Minnesota: Backtstrom/Harding = $7.9M cap space

NYR: Lundqvist/Biron = $8.2M cap space

Pittsburg: Fleury/Vokoun = $7M cap space

Buffalo: Miller/Enroth = $7M cap space (Enroth due for big raise net summer)

Montreal: Price/Budaj = $7.7M cap space

Edmonton: Khabibulin/Dubnyk = $7.2M cap space

NYI: Diepietro/Nabobkov = $7.3M cap space

Nashville: Rinne/Mason = $8.5M cap space

Carolina: Ward/Boucher = $7.3M cap space

Vancouver: Luongo/Schneider = $9.3M cap space

Here are 11 of 30 NHL teams who've committed in excess of $7M of cap space to a goalies. That's over 1/3 of the league who have a significant amount of space tied to goaltending. Looking at this list, which 'tandem' would you rather have? It's not even close. Luongo/Schneider is, by far, the best 'tandem' on this list (assuming Thomas takes a yr off). It's obviously not 'out of the ordinary' to have significant $$ tied to goaltending.

The Canucks have been in the top 1/3 of the league for last 5 yrs with man games lost to injury. It's a pretty fair to say there's a high probability a goalie gets injured next yr. Would you rather have Luongo play those games or Dan Ellis? If Gillis can't get a homerun via trade, he should keep both goalies next yr. Opportunity cost people.

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Luongo is here to stay, temporarily that is. MG is in no rush to deal him as we are cap compliant. When a deal can be made that gets us what we want, then he will be traded. But he most certainly will not be traded for a bag of pucks just to get rid of him. He's a good team player, and will be patient until the time is right. During the season his value will go up, as many teams will lose faith in their goaltending situation, and want to try to turn their seasons around. Some teams will have their goalies do fine, but others will be swimming in quicksand, and in need of an elite goalie to help steady the team.

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