We are 20 years into the existence of the Arizona Coyotes and 11 years past the creation of the salary cap, and here we stand on new ground.
For the first time ever, the Coyotes are a cap team.
They may even end up utilizing long-term injury reserve to obtain additional space during the 2016-17 season, general manager John Chayka acknowledged Tuesday after signing Tobias Rieder to a $4.45-million, two-year extension.
“I’m a little sick and tired of having all the flexibility in the world and not enough good players to do anything with it,” Chayka said on a conference call. “For me it’s a good situation to be in.”
Of course, the Coyotes aren’t actually spending right up to $73-million cap because they’ll be carrying more than $20-million worth of players who won’t play for the team.
But it still marks a new course for the organization.
Chayka, at 27 the youngest GM in NHL history, prioritized turning his excess cap room into assets during his first summer on the job. That saw him acquire the final year of Pavel Datsyuk’s $7.5-million deal from Detroit to move up in the first round of the draft before taking on the final three years of David Bolland’s $5.5-million annual contract from Florida to get prospect Lawson Crouse.
When you add Rieder’s raise to the books, it leaves the Coyotes with less than $900,000 in wiggle room depending on their final roster decisions. As a result, Chayka and assistant GM Chris O’Hearn will have to monitor the team’s cap situation on a daily basis – just like the league’s big spenders do.
“We’ve got some flexibility,” said Chayka. “We certainly have an ability, both with assets and still with some cap space, to make some moves if need be … and so that’s not an issue for me moving forward in terms of restricting any movement. I think it makes Chris O’Hearn’s job a little more difficult but I know he’s looking forward to the challenge. For us, as we grow this thing moving forward there is a day where we foresee ourselves being a cap team.
“It’s good practice to work on the different nuances and mechanisms of the CBA.”
With one of the youngest, most promising rosters in the league, Arizona is a strong candidate to accrue an overage that carries over to 2017-18 (although it will be more than offset with the Datsyuk and Chris Pronger contracts coming off the books next summer).
Shane Doan, Dylan Strome, Anthony Duclair and Max Domi all have reachable bonuses built into their contracts.
Crouse is another player that will fall under that category if he makes the team – “He’s made it very difficult to think of even the potential of sending him down,” said Chayka – and 18-year-old defenceman Jakob Chychrun has a chance to stick around as well.
The Coyotes are happy to have Rieder back in the fold after a tough, drawn-out negotiation.
At one point the player’s agent, Darren Ferris, mentioned the possibility of a trade and he also floated the idea of the 23-year-old German signing in the KHL.
“For us, we thought he wanted to be here,” said Chayka. “At the same time, if it was his prerogative to go to Russia he certainly had that alternative available. I think when you’re going through a negotiation you try to be as unbiased as possible, and just ask yourself if it’s a fair deal based off the market and the player’s performance. That’s kind of the reality: We’re not the ones that dictate the market, the player’s performance and output, that’s what the market bears.
“So for me, if I felt that I was offering a player an unfair contract then it would incentivize him to look for other options.
“I felt we were up-front and fair and worked with Toby on a long-term deal, a short-term deal and we ended up on a two-year deal that made sense for everybody. But I think, again, if a player wants to be here then he wants to be here. So that was my approach to this negotiation.”
It’s an approach unlike any we’ve seen before in Arizona.
