2014-15 salary cap may not hit 71M, per Lombardi

When answering questions about Marian Gaborik and Brayden McNabb, General Manager Dean Lombardi told reporters that the 2014-15 salary cap may not rise as high as had been projected. December 2013 reports pegged next year’s cap at roughly 71 million dollars – up from 64.3 million in 2013-14 – though the ceiling could be affected by a weak Canadian dollar. This could potentially have a significant effect on the Kings, who count Marian Gaborik, Matt Greene, Willie Mitchell and Trevor Lewis amongst the players who would become unrestricted free agents on July 1 without a new contract. Dwight King, Linden Vey, Brayden McNabb and Andy Andreoff are players bound for restricted free agency. The Kings have already devoted 56.8 million dollars to 17 players in 2014-15, according to CapGeek.

Dean Lombardi, on trade negotiations:
I think the biggest thing in the talks is the realization that the cap is not going up as much as we thought. We found out to our chagrin and surprise the other day that we’ve been operating, we’ve been told that the cap was going to be 71 [million], and now with the Canadian dollar having tanked, that the cap could be as low as 68. That’s a huge swing. That’s more of the talks to our three guys – Mitchell, Lewis and Greene – who we all would like to bring back. That’s more of a hindrance than anything we acquired [Wednesday]. That was something that we did not expect to hear, and it’s actually ironic that we found out from the agent who found out from the union…That’s difficult – it might not sound like a lot, but two-million when you’re at the cap trying to fit guys in and you’re always 500 away or a million away, and it might not sound like a lot, but that has a big impact on what you’re able to do. That’s much more troubling to the process than ‘Is this going to come down to all three of these guys who we want back?’ Hopefully they want to stay here and be part of it, but that’s not always the case.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.