The most pressing piece of business is done for the Islanders. You have heard all about the organization’s belief in its core. Well, from 2023-25, the bill for Mathew Barzal, Anders Lee, Brock Nelson, Kyle Palmieri, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Casey Cizikas, Adam Pelech, Ryan Pulock, Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov will come in at $53.05 million annually, which, even once the cap starts increasing in the latter of those seasons, will account for well over half of the team’s annual spending after Barzal signed a mammoth nine-year, $73.2 million extension on Tuesday.
The cap math will be complicated a year from now, barring a disappointing season that sees the Islanders become a seller at the deadline. In addition to Barzal’s annual salary going from $7 million to $9.15 million, Kieffer Bellows ($1.2M) and Oliver Wahlstrom ($894,000) are in line for extensions as restricted free agents while Scott Mayfield ($1.45M), Semyon Varlamov ($5M) and Zach Parise ($750,000) will need to be re-signed or replaced as unrestricted free agents. The salary cap, currently $82.5 million, is reportedly projected to rise by only $1 million next season before the flat cap era finally comes to an end in the summer of 2024.
All this to say: the Islanders’ cap situation right now, in which they will enter the season with approximately $3.23 million in space, could be a luxury they won’t have again until 2024. The exact number depends on whether the Islanders carry 22 or 23 on their opening night roster, and who ends up filling the last few spots, but the underlying conclusion remains the same: Lou Lamoriello will go into the trade deadline with a significant amount of space at his disposal, perhaps as much as $15 million.
It is imperative that he use it.
