Rangers, Wild and Sabres might sweat potential cap changes the most

Earlier tonight, PHT took a look at Craig Custance’s report (subscription required) that a new CBA could punish teams for signing salary cap-circumventing contracts.

In this hypothetical scenario, teams that handed out contracts that included huge signing bonuses, stashed expensive players in the minors or paid players significantly more in certain years would suffer the most.

Custance points to three teams who would be especially concerned if the owners got their way with a drastically altered salary cap: the Buffalo Sabres, Minnesota Wild and New York Rangers.

Buffalo: Would be $18.76 million above a proposed cap ceiling of $54M.

• Tyler Myers‘ $12 million salary would account for 22 percent of a tweaked salary cap next season, according to Custance.

Minnesota: Would be $16.37M above $54M.

• Custance points out that Zach Parise and Ryan Suter‘s mammoth first-years would be slightly alleviated by the fact that Mikko Koivu‘s own substantial contract is back-loaded instead of front-loaded.

Rangers: Would be $13.1M above $54M.

• Custance assumes that New York would need to buy out Chris Drury and Wade Redden.
• Like Myers, Custance points out that Brad Richards will make a Myers-like $12M.

Those are the three outlooks that Custance shared, but teams like the Nashville Predators and Philadelphia Flyers probably won’t be too thrilled about punishments for big signing bonuses, either.

It’s crucial to note that such a system is only (allegedly) being discussed and there are plenty of ways to ease “offending” teams into a given scenario.

Still, it looks like it will be tougher to exploit loopholes in future summers.

(Again, H/T to George Malik.)