Cutter Gauthier could be looking for $15 million now, and the Anaheim Ducks will need to clear out salary after matching Leo Carlsson’s offer sheet
Hello Hockey: David Pagnotta, when asked about Anaheim Ducks needing to extend Cutter Gauthier, and moving out some salary. They appear to be willing to attach a second-round pick to clear some room.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Shawn: “Yeah. So what happens with Cutter Gauthier? Because now you know, if you look at the timeline of how everything was playing out, and I believe the original numbers for Carlsson were $11 million, $12 million for his extension. He goes to 18 now.
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If you’re, if you’re Cutter Gauthier sitting there saying, Okay, wait a second, this guy was going to be 11, 12, I was going to be underneath him. Now he’s at 18. What’s the number that he’s going to start searching for?”
Pagnotta: “Well, the, the number being tossed around out there is 15, in that range. So he could come in smaller on a shorter deal. They take a two-year, he’ll still be controllable as an RFA. They’ll give him the bigger bucks then. It’s possible. I don’t think that’s the objective from his camp. I think it’s, you know, get the 15 times eight type of deal. But we’ll see. Obviously, there’s there’s going to be more conversations that will continue to be.
So they’ve got just over, just over nine mil. You can free up an extra mil if you send (Laurent) Brossoit down. But they’re, they’ve been actively since for about a week, since last Sunday. They started to explore the market on some of their guys.
So (Frank) Vatrano, (Alex) Killorn, (Chris) Kreider. Killorn and Kreider, in the final year of their deals. Killer’s got a $6.25 (million cap hit. Kreider’s got six and a half. And Vatrano’s a little over four and a half, but there are deferrals on his, on his contract, so that complicates things a little bit, not significantly, but it’s a factor.
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They also have three second-round picks next year, and the chatter is that they’re willing to include a draft pick, presumably one of those seconds, with one of those guys in order to take the full pop. You know, you move one of Killorn or Kreider, gives you $15 (million), $16 (million) if you send Boissoit down, there’s enough money.
If you move two of those guys, you give yourself more breathing space, more wiggle room, and you could probably sign a replacement among the available free agents at a, at a discount, so to speak. And whoever it would be would have to take less. Understand that they’re going to get more ice time, pump their numbers a little more, get a bigger contract somewhere else next summer, or maybe in Anaheim.
Moving forward after this season, they have a lot more cap flexibility because both, as I mentioned, Killorn and Kreider come off the books.”
Gazzola: “Yeah, that’s what I want to get to next. Yep.”
But so next season and on, not this season, which is 26-27 because we’re in the new calendar year, but 27-28, and on, here’s a lot more breathing space. And yeah, they’ve got (Beckett) Sennecke that they got to sign. He’s got two years left, so his money won’t kick in for two years. Even though they could sign him to an extension next summer, which, based on how shit, excuse me, based on how things went, how things went, stuff went this past summer, I’d imagine the Ducks want to get ahead of that sooner than later.
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So the, the Sennecke money isn’t really a big factor because, by at that point, the cap’s going to be like $122 million, so it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just in the now.Aand there are ways to get creative, it’s just they’re going to have to be creative.”
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