Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield enter the opposing zone two against one. Suzuki passes to Caufield, who scores. The Bell Center explodes.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Everyone is happy… with one exception. While we celebrate on the ice and in the stands, John Sedgwick, assistant general manager of the Canadiens, silently wonders how he will manage to balance the club’s payroll taking into account the performance bonuses that the two youngsters are approaching. stars.
The quip comes from Sedgwick himself. Laughing, he hastens to add that this is obviously a joke and that he has the team’s success first at heart.
The anecdote nevertheless betrays a reality with which each NHL team must deal, especially in a context where the salary cap has not budged a bit for two years.
Sedgwick, at the Canadian, is the guardian of financial conscience. It is he who knows from top to bottom the collective agreement linking the NHL to the Players’ Association, who masters all the detours, all the commas. He is also the one who must juggle the club’s payroll on a daily basis in order to comply with the ceiling imposed by the league. All teams have their own expert in the field.
He already played this role when Marc Bergevin was the general manager, and he survived the upheavals of recent months within the management. Kent Hughes confirmed he was here for good and made him his deputy.
He was therefore at the heart of the action, in recent weeks, when the Canadian said goodbye to five players: Tyler Toffoli, Ben Chiarot, Artturi Lehkonen, Brett Kulak and Andrew Hammond. In view of next season, the organization has already given itself “space to breathe”, he underlines.
This flexibility will be welcome, because, according to him, the salary cap should not increase much. The manager bases his projections for 2022-2023 on a modest increase of 1 million, a figure that was circulating last summer. John Sedgwick prefers to take a “conservative” approach, at the very least until the league confirms the new cap.
“It’s like the weather: if we announce little rain and it rains a lot, we are angry, he illustrates. I prefer to project lower and have a nice surprise. »
The famous list
A raised cap wouldn’t be the only good news for the Habs’ assistant general manager this offseason.
Much was made at the trade deadline of the good moves of his boss Kent Hughes, who loaded up on high draft picks and quality prospects. One of the goals of the last few weeks, however, was to get rid of Shea Weber’s contract. It didn’t happen. A victim of multiple injuries, the defender was placed on the long-term injured list before the first game of the season, and he will never leave it again, unless he officially announces his retirement.
From the press briefing confirming his appointment a month ago, Sedgwick said that dealing full-time with the long-term injured list (LBLT) was not “optimal”.
To fully understand this declaration, a theoretical detour is necessary in order to clarify the general principles of the LBLT. A false belief is that the salary of a long-term injured player – a player guaranteed to miss 10 games or 24 days – is simply wiped out while he is away. This is incorrect.
When a player is placed on this list, his team gets relief calculated on the basis of the club’s wage bill, the player’s salary and the applicable cap. He will then be allowed to exceed the ceiling by the value of this relief.
If you are dropped at this stage, remember this: it is advantageous for a team to be as close as possible to the salary cap to take advantage of the maximum additional margin.
Let’s continue: remember the joke about performance bonuses? It’s a real problem. When a team exceeds the “normal” salary cap, the performance bonuses due to its players are added to its payroll for the following season. This concerns three Canadian players: Caufield, Suzuki and Alexander Romanov. If they achieve all their goals this season, 1.475 million will be added to the club’s payroll in 2022-2023.
That may seem relatively marginal – not even 2% of the value of the current salary cap. But when you know that the Habs already have 79.8 million in contractual commitments for next season, it suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.
The Weber case
So here we are again at the thorny issue of Shea Weber. He is one of two Canadian players who spent the entire season on the LBLT. The other is Carey Price, but all signs point to a return to action before the end of this season.
In all likelihood, Weber would become the only problematic case. This is the reason why we wanted to get rid of his contract. A trade with the Arizona Coyotes would have come close to succeeding. “Conversations” with other teams will continue over the next few months, Kent Hughes explained last Monday.
Because there is another problem. During the off-season, teams can see their payroll exceed the cap by up to 10% of its value. However, the mass then includes all the players of the team, regardless of their state of health.
Depending on whether the cap goes up or not, the Canadiens would only be left with around $8 million to $10 million wiggle room, with seven restricted free agents who are out of contract, including Rem Pitlick, Alexander Romanov and Samuel Montembeault. Fans dreaming of Patrice Bergeron or Kristopher Letang better prepare for a disappointment.
The most obvious solutions to this situation: find takers for Weber’s contract or for other high earners. Better yet: a combination of both.
The picture is dark, but John Sedgwick is not fatalistic. Trading Shea Weber, “from my perspective, it would help me, but it’s not necessary,” he says.
He has dealt with this issue throughout the season, he can do it again if necessary. “That’s why I’m here!” he laughs. So he won’t be begging his bosses to make a disadvantageous deal just to wipe the captain’s name off the books.
The assistant general manager also reminds that exchanging a player with a heavy contract is easier during the summer than at the trade deadline. For example, rather than committing to a free agent for five or six years, general managers will check to see if similarly performing players who already have shorter contracts are available.
“Things can change with a phone call,” recalls Sedgwick.
This is what makes him say that the management of the Canadian “is not desperate”. He is ready to handle all possible situations. His planning will simply be different depending on what happens next.
For obvious reasons, all the energy was invested in the trade deadline. Now that it is behind them, the members of the management of the Canadian will concentrate on the off-season.
In other words, on the seventh floor of the Bell Centre, summer has already begun.