After the Edmonton Oilers carried the largest cap overage into this season, it won’t be the same heading into next season.
This, according to salary cap resource website PuckPedia, who on late Thursday night reported overages for all 32 teams.
The Oilers are projected to have the second fewest of 11 teams with just $150,000 carrying over into next season, a far cry from the $3.45-million they carried into this. Edmonton could see another $100,000 added, however, depending on how deep they get into the playoffs.
Should the Oilers advance into the third round and Corey Perry plays in either 50 percent of the second round games, or 50 percent of the first and second round games, he will earn another $50,000, according to PuckPedia. If they get to through round three and Perry plays 50 percent of the games in that round or 50 percent of games in the first three rounds, he’ll earn another $50,000, PuckPedia added.
That $150,000 that is confirmed to carry over is due to a performance bonus in Perry’s contract, which gave him such a bonus for playing in 15 games this season. He drew in for 81 this season, scoring 19 goals and 39 points.
What impacted the cap this year was Connor Brown’s first contract with the team — a one-year deal worth $775,000, but one that carried a $3.23-million bonus that would impact this years cap if he played 10 games in 2023-24. He blew that number out of the water last season, and the Oilers salary cap felt it this year.
Edmonton will have a significant amount of dead money coming off the cap next season: $3.55-million in bonus overages from last season, as well as $1,916,667 coming off the books as this season was the last the team had James Neal’s buyout impacting their cap. It’s a total of $5,466,667 in space that will open up, though Jack Campbell’s buyout amount will increase from $1.1-million this year to $2.3-million next, so the true amount that opens up is $3,166,667.
That’s a sizeable amount for the Oilers, who are projected to enter the offseason with $10,712,500 as of the time of writing. They will need to sort out restricted free agent contracts for Evan Bouchard, Ty Emberson, Noah Philp, Olivier Rodrigue, Cameron Wright, Alec Regula, and Roby Jarventie, though the latter of the group will reportedly leave the organization to play in Finland next season.
