New York Islanders Most Cap Space Available for 2018-19 in NHL

New York Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello is going to have a busy summer to try and immediately improve this hockey club. And money won’t be a factor.

For as long as we can all remember, money was always short for the New York Islanders. Even before there was a hard salary cap, the Islanders had financial issues. The hard cap era just exacerbated those issues.

In the cap era rarely, if ever, have the New York Islanders spent to that cap. Just three seasons ago the Islanders had a cap hit of $66.25 million, leaving them with $5.14 million in cap space. Or the tenth lowest payroll in the NHL.

If you dig even further the Islanders average cap space from 2007-2008 to 2015-2016 was $12.435 million. (Thanks to NHLNumbers.com for that.)

And then in 2016 Scott Malkin and John Ledecky took charge as the team’s majority owners. And the Islanders started spending close to the cap ceiling.

Lou has a number of items to address, but with a projected cap space of $28.259 million for 2018-19 and the most space in the NHL, money won’t be an issue.

That $28.259 million in projected cap space also doesn’t take into consideration the three to eight million dollar increase for 2018-19. That means the Islanders have around $31.259 to $36.259 million to make the moves they need to make.

But after singing some of their own free agents, how much will they have left to address these needs?

In trying to see how much space the New York Islanders will have to bring in new names I’m going to assume that the 2018-19 salary cap is set at $78 million leaving the Isles wit $31.259 in cap space.

Going through the current roster of players, the Islanders can sign who they want to keep and bring in a few big names.