The Minnesota Wild Aren't Alone With Their Dead Cap Burden

It has been two years since Bill Guerin pulled the trigger on an aggressive move intended to re-shape the roster of the Minnesota Wild.

By buying out the last four seasons of the 13-year contracts of left wing Zach Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter, Guerin made his squad instantly younger. And while the actual cash cost of the buyouts was a relatively manageable $13.3 million, the real penalty was the salary-cap penalty attached to the back-diving contracts.

Because both players received all but $10 million of their deals' $98-million total values in the first nine seasons, Minnesota's cap charges from the buyouts totaled more than $53 million, spread over eight seasons.

Since the buyouts, the Wild have posted seasons of 113 and 103 points and reached the playoffs — especially impressive last season, when they carried $12.74 million in dead cap space.

That number now climbs to its peak of $14.74 million for the next two seasons. Then, it will dip to $1.67 million a year for the final four seasons of the buyout period.

So while the Wild are led by star scorer Kirill Kaprizov, who carries a $9 million cap hit, and seeing the commitment to 22-year-old Matt Boldy jump to $7 million this fall, Guerin needs to economize in other areas.

He has a solid goaltending tandem of Filip Gustavsson and Marc-Andre Fleury at just over $7 million combined. He got the Tampa Bay Lightning to retain $200,000 when he acquired Patrick Maroon by trade on July 3, and will be leaning on promising rookies Marco Rossi and Brock Faber to play significant roles on their inexpensive entry-level contracts.

The Wild carry by far the biggest dead cap burden, but they're certainly not alone. Only five teams in the entire NHL currently aren't carrying any dead cap space into the 2023-24 season in the form of either buyout charges, retained salary from trades, or overages from 2022-23 player bonuses that were carried over because they didn't fit under that season's salary cap.

Shoutout to the Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, Toronto Maple Leafs and Vegas Golden Knights for staying nimble under extremely challenging cap circumstances.

Fourteen teams are dealing with bonus overages this year — nearly half the league. The most dramatic, of course, is the $4.5 million that the Boston Bruins must now absorb after signing Patrice Bergeron ($2.5 million) and David Krejci ($2 million) to those bonus-laden 35-plus contracts last season.

Here's a closer look at the four teams that are carrying dead cap burdens of $7 million or more into the new season.

Nashville Predators - $8.81 million

In the wake of their run to the Stanley Cup final in 2017 and their follow-up Presidents' Trophy campaign, the Nashville Predators committed to some big contracts with the mindset that they'd continue to challenge for championships.

It didn't turn out that way and now, with Barry Trotz taking over the GM's chair, the Preds have stripped down their roster with an eye toward the future.

All told, they're carrying just over $8.8 million in dead cap space for the new season thanks to two trades and two buyouts. The Predators retained salary when Mattias Ekholm was dealt to Edmonton at the 2023 trade deadline ($250,000 for three years) and when Ryan Johansen was traded to Colorado this summer. Johansen's $4 million retained for each of the next two seasons (50 percent) is currently the highest retention number on the books for the 2023-24 season.

Teams are also only allowed three total salary retention slots at any time. So the Preds have just one more spot available for the next two seasons.

Nashville also has Kyle Turris's 2020 buyout still on the books, at $2 million for the next four seasons. And the buyout of the last three years of Matt Duchene's contract costs the team $2.56 million this season, then significantly more in the two subsequent years: $5.56 million in 2024-25 and $6.56 million in 2025-26. Then, it drops dramatically for the final three seasons.

Next year, Nashville is set to join Minnesota in the eight-figure club, with $11.8 million in total dead cap space as their roster currently stands. But for now, Trotz still has cap flexibility: nearly $8 million of additional room that he could use to further shore up the roster for new coach Andrew Brunette this fall.

Chicago Blackhawks - $7.96 million

Since he took the reins in Chicago, Kyle Davidson has not been afraid to use cap space as a tool to add assets. Most explicitly, he acquired Josh Bailey from the New York Islanders on June 29 in exchange for a second-round pick in 2026, then bought out the last year of Bailey's $5 million deal later that same day.

That results in a charge of $2.67 million for 2023-24, and $1.17 million for the 2024-25 season.

The Blackhawks also have two other buyouts on their books from a year ago. Brett Connolly was bought out of the last year of his deal and carries a cap charge of $1.17 million for next season, while Henrik Borgstrom's contract counts for $183,334.

Davidson also retained the maximum 50 percent when he traded Jake McCabe to Toronto, along with Sam Lafferty, at the 2023 trade deadline. The Blackhawks keep $2 million of McCabe's salary on their books for each of the next two seasons and in exchange, they extracted a package from the Leafs that included a first-round pick in 2025 and a second-rounder in 2026.

Finally, the Blackhawks have one last year of the cap recapture penalty that was triggered when Duncan Keith retired in 2022, with one year left on his back-diving 13-year-deal. Keith, of course, played his final season in Edmonton, but the recapture penalty was charged back to Chicago. It was a whopping $5.5 million last season but drops to $1.9 million for 2023-24.

Like Nashville, Chicago remains flexible despite the significant dead cap burden. Davidson still has nearly $13 million in available space at his disposal.

San Jose Sharks - $7.47 million

Now that Erik Karlsson is a Pittsburgh Penguin, the Sharks have also used two of their three retained-salary slots: $1.5 million a year on Karlsson for the next four seasons, plus $2.72 on Brent Burns for two more years after last summer's trade with Carolina.

In addition to that $4.2 million in salary retention, the Sharks also have two buyouts on their books. Forward Rudolfs Balcers was bought out of the second year of a two-year contract last summer. The cost to the Sharks was just $8,334 last year, and $308,334 this year.

Martin Jones' buyout two years ago was more significant. He had three years remaining on a deal with a cap hit of $5.75 million, so the hit from the buyout is spread over six seasons.

Last year, the Sharks absorbed $2.4 million in dead cap space, and Jones won 27 games while earning $2 million with the Seattle Kraken. This year, San Jose's dead cap hit for Jones peaks at $2.9 million, while the 33-year-old has just signed with Toronto for $875,000.

Though the Sharks finished just two points out of the NHL basement last season, they were still capped out and dipping into the long-term injured reserve. That means the $25,000 performance bonus that Harvard defenseman Henry Thrun received when he turned pro and signed with the Sharks on March. 12 has been tolled into next season.

The Sharks' return in the Karlsson trade included Mikael Granlund ($5 million), Mike Hoffman ($4.5 million) and Jan Rutta ($2.75 million), a total of $12.25 million in cap commitment.

But Grier has improved his forward depth. And he has more flexibility going into the new season than he did last year, with just under $4 million in cap space currently at his disposal.

Philadelphia Flyers - $7.09 million

There are a couple of common threads between the four teams on this list: all are under relatively new management, and all missed the playoffs last season, although the Preds fell short by just three points.

The dead cap space that the Philadelphia Flyers carry into the new season is mostly a result of new GM Danny Briere changing the team's course — and jettisoning some players that did not click with coach John Tortorella.

That translated to Kevin Hayes being dealt to the St. Louis Blues for just a sixth-round pick in the 2024 draft — and with the Flyers retaining the maximum 50 percent of Hayes' $7.14 million cap hit, or $3.57 million for the next three seasons.

Briere also bought out Tony DeAngelo after just one year. That costs the Flyers $1.67 million in cap space in each of the next two seasons. Finally, they're carrying one last year of Oskar Lindblom's 2022 buyout, at a cap hit of $666,667.

Interestingly, Briere was able to avoid retaining salary when he moved Ivan Provorov to the Columbus Blue Jackets on June 6. He received three players and a second-round pick back from the Los Angeles Kings, who served as a third-party broker. And after dealing Cal Petersen and his $5 million cap hit for the next two years to the Flyers, the Kings retained 30 percent of Provorov's contract for the next two years ($2.025 million) before moving him on to Columbus.

So, the Flyers have $5.9 million in dead cap money on the books for next season. And like the Sharks, they were also using the long-term injured reserve last season, so their performance bonuses from 2022-23 will toll over to the cap for the upcoming season. The Flyers were responsible for $1.19 million in bonuses on entry-level contracts last year: $725,000 for 2019 first-round pick Cam York and $425,000 for collegian Noah Cates, who came out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth after being drafted in the fifth round in 2017.

Add those numbers in, and Briere has $7.09 in dead cap space in his first full season as Flyers GM. With 24-year-old RFA Morgan Frost still looking for a new deal, Briere currently has about $3 million in remaining cap space to work with.