NHL Insider reveals what prevented the Islanders from being able to sign Nazem Kadri
Weeks ago, it was reported that Nazem Kadri had a deal in place with the Islanders, but that he was waiting on them to clear cap space. Unfortunately for the Islanders, the Flames and GM Brad Treliving continued their outstanding off-season by swooping in and signing Kadri to a 7-year deal. Treliving said in his media availability yesterday that they approached Kadri with an offer just over a week ago and had an agreement around the same time which was also dependant on Calgary being able to move money out to make the numbers work.
The Flames were able to do so by trading Sean Monahan to the Habs yesterday, along with a first round pick in 2024, 2025 or 2026 depending on which of the conditions are met. The question is though, if the Islanders' plan for this off-season was to go "big game hunting" in free agency, why did they not move money out?
According to our friends at CapFriendly, the Islanders currently have $11.1M in cap space, which has mostly been accounted for based on what Elliotte Friedman said on the NHL Network this morning.
Friedman was on the NHL Network this morning and said he believes that deals for the Islanders' two remaining RFAs, Alex Romanov and Noah Dobson are done. He suspects that Romanov's deal will be around the $3M range for AAV while he is unsure of where Dobson's will land. Friedman does wonder if Dobson's AAV will be higher and if past deals to Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock are any indication, it will be. Both Pelech and Pulock signed longer term deals and if Dobson is looking for a long-term deal, his AAV will likely be higher than that of Pulock's $6.125M. That means that between Romanov and Dobson, around $9.5M of the Islanders' remaining $11.1M cap space is taken up by those two contracts.
The Islanders' off-season has been atrocious and you have to wonder if the time has come for Lou Lamoriello to finally step aside. Obviously $1.6M was not going to be enough to get a Kadri deal done and Lamoriello didn't really put himself in a good position to be able to compete for Kadri's services, or even Johnny Gaudreau's services for that matter. I'd imagine there were options to move some money at the draft, so it's really anyone's guess as to what stopped them from doing so.
