Last season, just when the door was closing on the offseason before the 2015-16 season, Ron Francis stuck his foot in and made his biggest deal of the summer. With the Blackhawks struggling to both sign Marcus Kruger and squeeze under the salary cap, Ron Francis more or less traded nothing to add Kris Versteeg and Joakim Nordstrom. The Canes parted with a fifth round pick, recent sixth-rounder Jake Massie and veteran AHLer Dennis Robertson but also received a third round pick to make the futures swap pretty even and Versteeg and Nordstrom pretty much free of charge.

Francis already went back to the salary cap well in Chicago when he landed promising young forward Teuvo Teravainen as the prize for taking the final year of Bryan Bickell’s contract. I profiled that trade HERE back on June 15, 2016.

So is Ron Francis done for the summer except doing something crazy like signing Raffi Torres to a PTO? —Oh wait, that actually happened. But I digress…As far as rationale odds go, I think the probability of Francis doing any more significant deals (not counting another NHL PTO or AHL-only contract) is small but not zero. There are still teams with cap challenges, but at least for now it seems likely that all can make the numbers work if they have to.

But on this last day of August, I am going to go out on a bit of a tangent that suggests there is still a deal to be done for Ron Francis this summer. It is actually not with the Blackhawks but rather with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

 

2016-17 Tampa Bay Lightning financial situation

Right now, General Fanager shows the Lightning at at $66.4 million with $6.6 million remaining below the salary cap ceiling. That sounds like plenty of money until you consider that the Lightning still needs to re-sign restricted free agents Nikita Kucherov and Nikita Nesterov which would put them at 22 players. The challenge is that Kucherov fits pretty squarely in the group of young restricted free agents like Nathan MacKinnon, Sean Monahan and Aleksander Barkov whose pay sits right at $6 million. If Yzerman got him to take a small discount, it could theoretically leave enough room for Tampa bay to be salary cap legal for opening day. But such a move would leave virtually no flexibility and also ignores bigger challenges on the horizon.

 

2017-18 Tampa Bay Lightning financial situation

Even if Yzerman pulls a rabbit out of his hat to make the math work for 2016-17, I do not think it is an overstatement to say that making 2017-18 work with the same set of players is completely impossible. The Lightning’s salary cap hit instantly goes up by $6.5 million when Victor Hedman ($4.0 million to $7.9 million) and Andrei Vasilevskiy ($0.9 million to $3.5 million) have new contracts kick in. The biggest savings to be had would be letting Ben Bishop and his current $5.9 million salary walk, and Bryan Boyle could in theory save another $2 million, but that is not enough. Replacements would cost at least $1-1.5 million, but more significant is another batch of increasing contracts. Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat are both coming off $3.3 million per year contracts and will require raises. And if Jonathan Drouin has a break out season who knows what his $894,000 entry-level contract rockets up to.

Financially it seems inevitable that Ben Bishop must depart and also at least 1 other player with a significant salary.

 

Tampa Bay Lightning expansion draft considerations

In addition to the salary cap challenges, the Lightning are scheduled to lose 1 more good player, probably a forward, to the expansion draft next summer. Counting Ryan Callahan and Valtteri Filppula who have no-movement clauses and must unfortunately be protected, I count at least 9 forwards who the Lightning would ideally want to protect. Depending on how you rank Tampa Bay’s forwards, the team would be faced with exposing someone like Alex Killorn or Ondrej Palat to the expansion draft. I guess the positive is that this could actually help with the salary cap issues for 2017-18, but I have to imagine that Yzerman would rather get a return for a good forward instead of losing 1 for nothing.

 

So what might Tampa Bay do to remedy both situations?

First, if you agree that the departure of Ben Bishop is a foregone conclusion for financial reasons, it could make sense for Yzerman to collect a small ransom of assets for him. The other move that reduces salary cap pressure and only gives up a player who would likely be lost next summer anyway is to trade away a forward for some combination of futures and inexpensive NHL roster players.

Aside from moving Bishop for a return before he departs as a free agent, the deal the Yzerman dreams about is somehow getting Valtteri Filppula to waive his no-movement clause and packaging him up with someone else to unload 1 bad contract and create financial flexibility in the process. This is essentially the Bryan Bickell/Teuvo Teravainen deal all over again. From a Hurricanes standpoint, it is not clear that Francis is in a position right now to absorb another big underproducing contract/player especially since Filppula’s deal is through the 2017-18 season. Best bet is that Yzerman buys out Filppula to clear out that roster slot and gain some salary cap savings for 2017-18.

If that deal cannot be done, then Yzerman could be forced to making more of a value for value hockey trade that sees him part with a good forward for futures and/or an inexpensive NHL roster player.

 

Example deals for each of the 3 scenarios

Ben Bishop

My hunch is that if Ron Francis wanted to do differently in net to start the 2016-17 season, it would already have happened. This deal is also challenging because it requires Francis/Yzerman to first work out the trade components, and then it requires Bishop to be willing to agree to sign a new deal with the Hurricanes. Francis has generally shied away from spending a king’s ransom in futures, but just maybe the asking price is coming down with no other options materializing.

Proposed Bishop deal: Ben Bishop for Eddie Lack plus Ryan Murphy plus a second round pick (or alternatively another draft pick in place of Murphy). This deal could also see some strange salary cap math with the Lightning retaining a part of Bishop’s salary and the Hurricanes retaining a portion of Lack’s salary to provide a bit more cap help to the Lightning going forward. That is a lot to give up especially when the futures payment is then immediately followed by a pricey goalie contract to boot.

 

Valtteri Filppula

If Francis did not already do a deal like this and take on $4.5 million in Bryan Bickell, this deal might be feasible depending on what Yzerman was willing to package with him. The fact that Filppula has a no-movement clause that he must waive and that his contract has 2 years remaining also makes the math challenging. The burning question is how much Steve Yzerman would be willing to give up to move all of this contract versus the alternative of buying Filppula out and getting some relief from a decreased cap hit and also spreading it over 2 years.

Proposed Filppula deal: Valtteri Filppula plus J.T. Brown or a small collection of picks/prospects for Jay McClement and lesser draft picks returned. McClement clears a roster spot for Filppula (who is an upgrade there) and also sends a little bit of salary back. J.T. Brown or the package futures is the Teravainen equivalent for helping out with a bad contract. I just do not think Francis has the budget to fit another bad contract despite liking the potential return for doing so.

 

Top 9 forward options – Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat, Jonathan Drouin, etc.

Again, it appears that Yzerman might be able to wedge under the cap ceiling for 2016-17 without doing a deal, but the challenge returns but bigger for next summer. And as noted above, Yzerman has more good forwards than he can protect for the expansion draft next summer anyway. The ideal thing for Yzerman would be to get a young, inexpensive roster NHLer who helps with the salary cap issues and ideally does not muck up the expansion draft protection situation even more. One of the Canes young defensemen would be the perfect fit. Noah Hanifin and Jaccob Slavin are probably untouchable, but might Brett Pesce be available for a fair return at the forward position? In addition to being a darn good hockey player still with upside potential, Pesce has 2 more years on his entry-level deal at less than $1 million per year and also is exempt from the expansion draft because of the professional experience threshold.

Is it possible for Francis to parlay Brett Pesce plus modest futures into a good young forward like Ondrej Palat or Jonathan Drouin partly because of the help Pesce brings in dealing with the salary cap and the expansion draft? Alex Killorn is the other possibility with value, but his 7-year $4.5 million/year contract is a big commitment for a middle of the roster player who slots a bit like Victor Rask.

Proposed top 9 forward deal: Ondrej Palat for Brett Pesce plus a third round draft pick plus a mid-tier prospect.

 

With that, I will flip the calendar to September and look forward to shifting from summer speculation to actually writing about real on-ice Hurricanes hockey.

 

Go Canes!

 

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