For the above posters who are all in on Ekblad next season, do you prefer him over Reinhart and/or Bobrovsky? Moving either Ekblad or Bobrovsky is pretty much the only way that the team has the money for Reinhart.
Which 2 of the 3 would you recommend Zito keep - Ekblad, Bobrovsky, or Reinhart?
We have 28M for this summer.
I am going to ignore the season after for now because it's a f***ing nightmare lmao (Verhaeghe, Bennett, Ekblad), but at least the cap should go up. CapFriendly has it at 92, I think thats a safe bet considering the 4M in leap between this season and next. But let's cross that bridge later.
So for this summer, here is your list of contracts
Cousins, Lorentz, Stenlund, Lundell (RFA), Gadjo (RFA), Lomberg, Montour, OEL, Mahura (RFA), and Stolarz, Forsling, Reinhart.
For the sake of ease, let's go from lowest to highest, and Ill round up here to overstate contracts
Lomberg - 1M
Kuli - 1M
Gadj - 1M
Stenlund - 1.2
I think the margin of error here is + or - 400K between the 4? Even if not all 4 are brought back, the 4 players replacing them should be within the same margins.
So let's say 23M left
Let's address Lundy. If we go by the 1M for every 10 points bench marker, his next contract should be around 3 to 3.5M per. Being an RFA he can be cost controlled a bit, so he will probably be up around 2.8 but Ill round up to 3M
That leaves 20.
Cant predict on Stolarz (making 1.1 currently) without addressing the Knight situation. Those two are making a combined 4.5 (3.35 of Knight counts against the cap + Stolarz salary). But safe to say whether they bring another goalie or Knight joins the team, it will be for around 1.1M again
So that leaves around 19M left.
19 between
Cousins, Lorentz, Mahura, Montour, OEL, Forsling, and Reinhart. We can safely remove Cousins and Lorentz from the equation.
Safe bet would be 18M between Reinhart and Forsling (not an even 9M split mind you), that leaves 1M left
The final 1M is either for Mahura or Balinskis joins the team
OEL and Montour walks.
2025-26 Zito will have to choose to move out Bob (last year of his contract), Bennett, Verhaeghe, and Ekblad.
You move Bob out then that gives you about 15 M to play around with letting you keep 2 out of 3 of the skaters and about 4M for a replacement of the other.