sign bahl already

Team: 2023-24 New Jersey Devils

Initial Creation Date: Jul. 30, 2023

Published: Jul. 30, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Given how strong this Devils team is the risk of having to suffer bonus overages related to performance increases.

For 23-24 the 'problematic' contracts are those of Hughes, Holtz and Mercer.
Nemec is unlikely to contribute to this problem in the short-term as he'll most likely be playing in the AHL throughout the entire season, but may incur a lot of performance related overages in futures seasons.

I think it's fair to assume 75% hit rate of the performance bonuses for the ELCs on the roster below, meaning that plays out to an additional cap hit of 1.7m (=2.2*0.75). With that in mind I think it makes sense to try and forego term in favour of low AAB for Bahl's next contract so that the cap hit from incurred performance bonuses may be wholly captured by the end of season available cap space.

End of season cap space amounts to 1.85m in this AGM, but it's unlikely that'll reflect the actual end of season amount as it's very likely that at least one player will have to be placed on LTIR for some amount of time over the course of the season.

The reason I'm writing about this is because eventual overages carried over from this season to the next may adversely affect the team's capability to make moves in the next offseason. Mercer, Schmid, McLeod and Foote will all have to be extended and everyone of those will most certainly be entitled to raises on their subsequent contracts. Mercer in particular should be coming in at anywhere between 6-7m if handed a long-term extension.