On Tuesday, NHL general managers sat down as a group of 30 for the first time this season.
The objective of the annual November meeting, which always surrounds the Hall of Fame inductions in Toronto, is typically twofold — to discuss potential rule changes (perhaps extending the length of overtime) and to begin planting seeds for eventual trades.
Less than a week later, the Florida Panthers, who vow to be aggressive as GM Dale Tallon tries to "accommodate" players who don't want to be Panthers, traded Kris Versteeg back to the Chicago Blackhawks for Jimmy Hayes and a minor-leaguer. But the way the trade was orchestrated signaled basically the only way trades can be made early this season.
The Panthers retained half of Versteeg's contract. So for the remainder of this year and the next two, the reigning Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks managed to add a talented NHLer to their third line for the mere price of $2.2 million a season.
Thanks to last year's lockout and how every team had to get compliant with the cap decreasing by nearly $6 million, it is scary how little salary-cap space teams have right now.
The Wild has the 19th-most cap space in the NHL — at $1.8 million. That is not a lot of cap space, especially when you have to leave room for injuries.
Yet, there are 18 teams worse off than the Wild!
Thirteen teams, including the Blackhawks, have dipped into their long-term injury relief, according to capgeek.com. That means you can surpass the salary cap ceiling by an injured player's cap hit. The tricky thing is once that player is healthy, a team must get cap compliant again.