With the Olympics underway, fans get to see best-on-best hockey for the first time in 12 years, and just the sixth time that NHL players have been able to participate in the games.
As a best-on-best tournament, there is no salary cap here, allowing countries to have no restraint in building their teams beyond the number of players.
One would think that being allowed that much freedom would make the process of choosing a team pretty easy, but if you are a country like Canada or the USA, you have a plethora of players to choose from—any snubs are bound to get attention when the only criterion appears to be “are they good at hockey.” We know that many management teams have stated that they are building an actual team, not an all-star one, which is a philosophy that some people may not agree with (it’s me, I’m people).
But what if there was a salary in the Olympics? How drastically would that change the teams and strategy? Perhaps that would be best for some of the management teams, as it would give them a little more leverage in saying they have to take less offensive players, not just for role but now for monetary reasons?
Those are the really logic-stretching reasons I’ve come up with for the reason of writing this article, when in fact it just seems like a kind of fun exercise. So let’s dive in and see what Team Canada could look like under a $95M cap.
Keeping the stars
To start off, even with cap constraints, there is absolutely no way you are keeping off any of Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, or Nathan MacKinnon. Sure, with the increased cap, all of their contracts are looking pretty good individually, but they still eat up $33.8M of the $95M.
Cale Makar is yet another must-have player, but his $9M now leaves just $52.2M for 21 more players, an average of $2.49M per player. That’s definitely going to spell some trouble.
What to do about goalies
This is where Canada’s lack of marquee goaltending comes in handy. Jordan Binnington, who was a controversial choice given his terrible year, can no longer be remotely in the conversation at $6M. How terrible. Anyways.
Unfortunately, Logan Thompson at $5.85M and Darcy Kuemper at $5.25M also now see themselves missing the team as cap casualties.
While MacKenzie Blackwood was the goalie some expected from the Colorado Avalanche to make the real Team Canada, his teammate, Scott Wedgewood, gets the call here. Thanks to his $1.5M pay and his extremely good season, he led all Canadian goalies in wins this year while riding a 0.912 save percentage, second to his teammate Blackwood.
Columbus’ Jet Greaves will get the number two spot, as his .910 save percentage, combined with a cap hit of just $812,500, is a hell of a lot of value.
Given that the third goalie is unlikely to ever play, we are gonna go with someone with the absolute cheapest contract that also has shown some decent play this season in Buffalo’s Colten Ellis, who is paid $775,000 this year. Sure, 0.896 isn’t exactly screaming out as Olympic worthy (other than…y’know), but when that is the eighth best save percentage amongst Canadian goalies who have played at least ten games this year, it’s actually not looking too bad, especially at the price.
That means the goaltending comes in at a total of $3,087,500, buying us a little more wiggle room on the players up front.
Taking in some value contracts
Value contracts are key, and what are bigger value contracts than rookie ones?
Macklin Celebrini made actual Team Canada without salary being an issue, so with a salary cap, his $975,000 cap hit is a no-brainer. But now, fellow young phenom, Connor Bedard, gets to don the Maple Leaf after his snub at an even cheaper $950,000, as does New York Islander’s Matthew Schaeffer at $975,000.00 as well.
While potentially controversial, we will keep that youth movement going with Anaheim’s Bennett Sennecke, who has 44 points in 56 games, and the Los Angeles Kings’ Brandt Clarke, who has 27 points in 56 games, almost twice as many points as his teammate and current Olympian Drew Doughty.
That means we have just under $45M left for eight forwards and five defencemen, bumping up the average to around $3.45M a player.
So let’s go back to some higher-priced players and see what we can do.
Fleshing out more seasoned players
Starting with players currently on the team, Brandon Hagel has seen his career take off since joining the Tampa Bay Lightning, and a point-per-game player who adds some grit, and at just $6.5M that is definitely good value. Similarly, Brad Marchand has shown he still has game in Florida at $5.25M, so he gets to keep his spot, too.
Given that we already have two rookies on the back end, we will also keep Thomas Harley and his $4M since he has international experience from last year and frankly performed very well. Josh Morrissey at $6.25M also makes it, as he is arguably the second best defenceman on the current team. That gives us a solid top four defence corps without being too expensive.
We now have $22.5M for six forwards and three defencemen. So looks like we have to go back to the discount pile if we are going to be able to fill out the roster.
Luckily, there is a top-scoring defender making just $975,000 in Darren Raddysh, so that sets up our top six defence corps nicely. He also has the added benefit of being a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning, meaning we get to keep coach Jon Cooper happy.
What other forwards can we add?
Since we only have eight forwards, though, maybe we should look at spending the majority of our cap on four forwards to fill up our starting lineup. If we decided to round out the four outside players with league minimum contracts, we would have just under $18M, allowing us to pick players in the $4M range.
I’m going to go a bit above that, though, and pick McDavid’s running mate, Zach Hyman, at $5.5M. After all, since coming back from injury on November 15th, he has 22 goals in 39 games, ninth most in the league in that span and fourth among all Canadians, has known chemistry with McDavid ,and brings an edge to his game that management loves. Also, this is an Oilers blog, so we have to have at least one other player on the team.
I’m also going to give John Tavares a second chance to play in a gold medal game after he was injured during the 2014 games in Sochi and is showing some continued game with 47 points in 57 games this year. I would love to do the same for Steven Sttamkos, but unfortunately, $4.4M is a lot easier to fit in than $8M.
For the remaining spots, do we keep going the youth route with players like Frank Nazar, Zach Benson, Logan Stankoven, and Adam Fantilli? Or do we need to look for some more veteran players that would not normally be considered options for a best-on-best tournament, but have value contracts to make up for it, like a seemingly rejuvenated Corey Perry or Claude Giroux (who give us the benefit of having a large amount of their salary tied to bonuses), to help balance out the youth?
Let’s take Perry for his experience, and then Fantilli and Stankoven as the more senior of the youths.
Finishing off the roster
For the last two defence spots, what if we give Brent Burns his Olympic chance that he missed out on? At only $1M and putting up 26 points in 55 games, that’s not too bad.
We now have just shy of $6.8M left for a forward and a defenceman. Do we try splitting it at $3.4ish million each, or do we go with someone at a higher amount and bring another minimum wage player?
Perhaps someone like Mike Matheson at $4.875M? Or add another Avs defenceman in Sam Girard or Josh Manson? After all it is the best team in the league, why not bring in half their d-corps?
Or, you know who makes exactly $3.4M and is a friend of this blog? Jake Walman. Granted, Walman has had his struggles this year, especially with injuries.
On the youth side, there is Jamie Drysdale, but $2.3M is still a bit steep.
Troy Stecher is making just $787,500 and having a decent season in Toronto, and has the added benefit of being a former Oiler (for this blog’s purposes). Plus, we are talking about the eighth defenceman spot. If we pick him, we still have almost $6M to play with at the forward position.
Let’s look at some of those options.
One pretty good one is Jared McCann, who has 31 points in 32 games this year at a $5M cost.
But do you know which Canadian forward leads all the remaining players within our budget in points this year with 48 in 46 games? If the numerous references to this being an Oilers blog didn’t give it away already, I am clearly talking about Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and his $5.125M pact. This would give the team a full line that has proven chemistry and success in Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid and Hyman, which in a tournament where you don’t have full access to all the best players, means having one less thing to worry about in creating lines and strategy.
Presenting a cap-compliant Team Canada
Let’s take a final look at the roster that comes in at $94,134,281:
Forwards:
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Connor McDavid – Zach Hyman
Brandon Hagel – Nathan MacKinnon – Connor Bedard
Brad Marchand – Sidney Crosby – Corey Perry
John Tavares – Macklin Celebrini – Beckett Senneke
Adam Fantilli – Logan Stankoven
Defence:
Matthew Schaefer – Cale Makar
Josh Morrissey – Darren Raddysh
Thomas Harley – Brandt Clarke
Troy Stecher – Brent Burns
Goalies:
Scott Wedgewood
Jet Greaves
Colten Ellis
Honestly, it’s not a bad team. Sure, losing players like Mitch Marner, Nick Suzuki, Sam Reinhart, and Mark Stone up front is tough, but Connor Bedard, Zach Hyman and arguably Nugent-Hopkins help cushion that blow. Realistically speaking, it’s the bottom four forwards that are an issue, depth-wise, and when you still have three of the best forwards in the world on the team, I think you can handle that.
As mentioned above, Canada’s goaltending is so questionable in general that it’s arguable that this would be a significant downgrade, especially when a goalie who is objectively worse than all three is apparently going to be the starter.
It’s the back end where I think this team really gets hurt. We do manage to keep three of the eight defencemen going to Milan, but losing Shea Theodore and Devon Toews really hurts. Luckily, the left side is still quite strong with Schaeffer tagging in, but the right side certainly has its question marks. That’s why we are taking five of them, as you gotta think at any given point at least two of them (outside of Makar) will give you what you need.
I’m sure there will be many choices that people disagree with me on (especially the non-McDavid Oilers ones), but hey, at least I have the excuse of cap constraints, unlike maybe some other people who also chose their own team’s players over potentially better choices (I also have the excuse that my choices mean nothing since I have no actual control over who goes). So please let me know in the comments how wrong I am and who I should have taken instead.
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