Entering the first week of December, three of the four NHL division leaders; the Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings have been struck by injuries to key players. These teams cannot address those losses because of a lack of space under the salary cap.
The Montreal Canadiens are riding high, leading the Atlantic with 41 points (12 points ahead of the Ottawa Senators) in spite of losing goaltender Carey Price for most of November.
After returning and winning three straight, the Hart and Vezina Trophy winner re-aggravated a knee injury in a 5-1 win at Madison Square Garden last week. Price will be out a minimum of six weeks.
Montreal has been able to survive with backup Mike Condon in goal and GM Marc Bergevin stated Monday that the club will not be shopping for a goalie. Maintaining their lead may be difficult with Price out until the All-Star Break, and Brendan Gallagher is also out until January with a pair of broken fingers.
The Rangers are in a nip and tuck battle with the Washington Capitals for top spot in the Metro. In the span of a week have lost center Derek Stepan for 6 weeks with broken ribs and defenseman Kevin Klein for two to three weeks with an abdominal injury.
New York can compensate for the loss of Stepan by moving veterans Jarret Stoll or Dominic Moore up in the lineup, but the loss of Klein for a lengthy stretch forces head coach Alain Vigneault to heap more minutes on Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Keith Yandle. Vigneault will also have to play aging veteran Dan Boyle and rookie Dylan McIlrath more than he would like.
The Kings have a slim lead over San Jose in the Pacific, but have yet to fill the absence on the blueline created by the departure of defenseman Slava Voynov to the KHL. They have lost veteran Matt Greene indefinitely with a shoulder injury that requires surgery.
Los Angeles will have to rely more on Drew Doughty, Jake Muzzin and Alec Martinez to pick up the slack and hope that journeyman Jamie McBain and youngsters Derek Forbort and Brayden McNabb can hold down the fort until GM Dean Lombardi can deal for reinforcements in late January or early February.
All three clubs have no option but to address their issues internally, but even if they wanted to pursue trades, cap constraints and the state of the market prevents them from doing so.
According to General Fanager, the Habs, Rangers and Kings have between $1-2 Million in available cap space. More than half the league has less than $3 Million available. The other half is made up mostly of teams with self-imposed budgets and will not use their available cap room.
Deals to bolster or shake up lineups are limited to dollar-in, dollar-out transactions, which are nearly impossible to arrange. Trades for rental players in the final year of their contract happen in the last couple weeks leading up to the February 29th trade deadline. With very few clubs out of the playoff race, the asking prices are bound to be exorbitant.
With the implementation of the new CBA, teams have the ability of retaining salary on players they want to trade to provide some economic flexibility. The amount that teams can retain is limited to 50%, it has to be the same percentage for the length of the contract and teams can only do it for three players maximum.
For contending teams to make the trades to plug holes or for those near the bottom of the standings who want to move players out, the system has to be adjusted to make that possible, but that is not likely to happen until the next CBA.
Each week in “Rink Rumblings”, Michael Augello of Hockeybuzz.com, who can be found on twitter @MikeInBuffalo, takes an in-depth look at the players, games and news from around the National Hockey League.