Saturday, June 7, 2014

CYOA Caps Edition: Scenario 1.1, 1.2

Welcome back to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, where I continue your saga as one of the top executives in the 2014 Caps organization. Today, I'll recap what happens in the scenario you chose for GMBM and propose some new ones for you to mull over.

And without further ado, here are the scenarios.

Scenario 1.1: You have decided to use the compliance buyout on Brooks Laich, thus saving 3 million dollars in cap space for the 2014 season (per CapGeek), and now have about 7.5 million dollars left after resigning some key prospects. You have many options to pursue, most importantly a second line center, a shutdown defenseman, and maybe an extra left wing. Your preferred targets are Mikhail Grabovski and Matt Niskanen, keeping your second line center and strengthening up the defense. However, they may be expensive, considering you have quite a few holes to fill.
Scenario 1.1.1 To aggressively pursue Grabovski and Niskanen, worth between 7-9 million combined, strengthening the team at the cost of blowing the salary cap, see scenario 1.1.1 in 2 posts.
Scenario 1.1.2 To let Grabovski and Niskanen walk and look to cheaper alternatives that will still help the team but will also save money, see scenario 1.1.2 in 2 posts.  

Scenario 1.2: You have decided to keep Brooks Laich, and have only 4.5 million dollars left to improve the team. Right now, the most pressing issue is the D corps, and you have decided to go all or nothing on some top D-men. The preferred targets are Matt Niskanen or Brooks Orpik, both of whom would cost you less than the 4.5 million dollars. However, you would also like to keep Mikhail Grabovski, who was fantastic on the second line, but will cost every penny of your 4.5 mil.
Scenario 1.2.1 To let Grabovski walk and pursue Niskanen or Orpik for about 3-3.5 million dollars, thereby saving some cap space for the season and shoring up the D, see scenario 1.2.1 in 2 posts.
Scenario 1.2.2 To go all in on Grabovski to keep your second-line center, which will blow your cap space but keep your offense strong, see scenario 1.2.2 in 2 posts.

Some notes on this: currently the Caps have 16 million dollars cap space. The 4.5-7.5 million dollar estimates were based on re-signings the Caps haven't done yet but I predict they will. Also, for simplicity's sake, I kept the options down to just two for each, the two I saw as most plausible.

Again, please leave the path you choose based on what you've chosen earlier in the comments, and stay tuned for more from Choose Your Own Adventure: Caps Edition. 

5 comments:

  1. Just curious about the cap numbers. For starters compliancing Brooks (instead of ordinary course buyout) removes his entire 4.5mil cap hit so that number appears to be off. Second right now the Caps have in the neighborhood of 12-15mil in space (depeneding on the final cap number) and the only two UFA/RFA contracts that belonged to the big club are Grabovski and Penner. The later sure ain't coming back so there should be 12-15mil AFTER all required Signings other than Grabbo and before the decision to compliance Laich or not.

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    1. Thanks for commenting. You're right about the compliance buyout, I made a mistake on that. As for the other signings, I'm assuming players like Nate Schmidt and Michael Latta, who are probably going to get some big league playing time, will want some type of raise, along with players like Leggio and Schilling etc. Using the armchair GM, I ended up with 4.5 mil before Laich.

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    2. firstly i think your porbably overpaying those guys in your estimations, and secondly their salaries would only count against the cap if they were with the big club, which would only be 22 (maybe 23) people large at most. buying out laich and not resigning anyone keeps us at 19, so you would only add the cap hit of 3 of those guys - 1 for every player signed.

      this is assuming they get 2 way contracts, which 4 of those players mentioned likely will, but even if they didn't 1 million would be buried for each contract and no one there is likely to receive more than that.

      your numbers would more likely be 17 and a half million to sign 2 forwards and 1 defensemen in scenario 1.1 and 14 million to re-sign grabo and and pursue upgrades on defense (assuming grubaur and one of either kundratek/oleksy/wellman are called up)

      yes we have alot of money.

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    3. It's completely possible that I made a mistake. I may have simply added a 0 to the re-sign price, changing 500,000 to 5,000,000 on accident, or something like that. The aim for this activity is really just to see how you would respond as a GM to a certain situation. If I had kept names out of this, we wouldn't have this problem. I see your points, however, and try will try to rectify them in the future posts. Thank you for commenting.

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    4. Mostly I was commenting because I think it does affect what you chose to do in terms of cap dollars. I think the best bet in general when capgeeking/rosterbaiting is to generall avoid dealing with guys who will spend 90% of the year in Hershey, gotta figure that if there is more than 100k in cap space a competent GM can work the magic needed on a recall.

      Anyway I'd go with 1.2.2:

      Keep BL21 he can play 3C/4C. Getting Grabbo should cost 5.5-ish. Does mean I probably can't bid for Niskannen or Stralman (both of those guys are probably headed for Mike Green or near Greener money) but there are some depth D worth the money I still have.

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