Everyone wants to keep Jake Guentzel and yeah, why wouldn't you?

He's a proven scorer who had outstanding chemistry with the Carolina Hurricanes' top guys through both the regular season and the playoffs.

In 17 regular season games with the Hurricanes, Guentzel had eight goals and 25 points and then he followed that up with four goals and nine points in 11 postseason games.

Overall, Guentzel seemed to be a perfect fit in Carolina.

But it was reported a couple of days ago that the Canes were shopping Guentzel's signing rights, which is a sign that they don't think they're going to be able to sign him.

Why wouldn't they sign him? He was a perfect right, right?

Unfortunately, the NHL salary cap is a thing and for a team like Carolina, who's young talent is all starting to collect big contracts, the squeeze is real.

On the surface, losing Guentzel is a negative whichever way you draw it up.

Anytime you lose a bonafide star power player, it's not a good thing.

But Guentzel was also a luxury. 

Carolina has been a team routinely at the top of the league year in and year out without Guentzel. 

The fact of the matter was that he was a luxury addition for one final run with the current core and now, he's going to be a costly piece.

There's also the fact that he'll be entering his 30s, typically the time when most players are leaving their primes.

According to AFP Analytics, Guentzel is projected to be paid about $9.3 million on the open market.

The Canes have anywhere between approximately $26 million and $31 million in cap space so Guentzel himself would command around a third of that if the Hurricanes could re-sign him.

Then you have other players like Seth Jarvis who are also going to be commanding big dollars.

AFP Analytics has him at $6.2 million per year on a short term deal and $7.8 million on a long term deal.

Put both of those players together and you've eaten up well over half of your available space.

And then heading into next season, the Hurricanes would still need to fill out three defensive spots and another three forward spots.

Even if you fill in a couple of those spots with guys like Scott Morrow, Bradly Nadeau and Jackson Blake, which there is no guarantee that they are ready for steady NHL minutes yet, you're still needing multiple roster spots to be filled.

And then what do you do with Martin Necas? Jack Drury? Jaccob Slavin is going to need a new deal the year after that.

While it's nice to have multiple top-end players, the costs really start to pile up and you still have to fill out an entire roster.

Guentzel is by far one of the top UFAs on the market and somebody is going to pay him those big dollars. 

In the end, the Hurricanes are probably just going to be outbid, not because of this 'cheap' or inflexible negotiating narrative, but because they simply can't afford to tie up him that much money.

Carolina just doesn't have that game breaking talent where you can just ignore the bottom half of the lineup.

They need a balanced roster.

So while Guentzel would be great to have and would still probably be a net positive overall, the Canes would probably have trouble building out a competitive roster for this season and into the future.