As the saying goes: "Another day, another dollar"; but in the case of the Vancouver Canucks, there's plenty more money at stack in what they're currently up to. And it relates to how they're been navigating the salary cap over the past week.
It all started on Oct. 24, when the Canucks assigned forward Arshdeep Bains and defenceman Erik Brännström to Abbotsford. At the time, it was speculated that this was connected in some way to the pending return of Derek Forbort, before the duo were recalled to Vancouver the following day.
Bains and Brännström were then again assigned to Abbotsford over the weekend, before once more being recalled to Vancouver on Monday. The back-and-forth transactions are purely paper moves however, as the Canucks look to accrue as much cap space as possible.
Canucks looking down the road
This of course all relates to the Canucks having a good amount of money, if they want to attempt any trades down the road to improve the team prior to the Mar. 7 deadline in 2025. As per PuckPedia, at the time of writing they currently have cap space of $2,167,470 and are in line for $8,876,306 of cap space at the trade deadline.
Of course these figures will fluctuate in the coming days, weeks and months, but Bains and Brännström are currently being used to help the Canucks' position, with both being waiver exempt at this time. Of the two though, Bains is the one being more negatively impacted, in a financial respect specifically.
Bains sees a big dip in money in the AHL
Giving due credit to Noah Strang of the Daily Hive, this comes down to the different values of Bains' contract at the NHL and AHL levels. While his base salary is $775k in the NHL, it is just $70k when he's in Abbotsford.
To give even you more of an idea of just how much of a difference this makes to what Bains earns, consider that the NHL season lasts 192 days. Therefore, the 21-year-old makes $4,036.46 per day when he's with the Canucks, compared to just $364.58 for every day he's assigned to Abbotsford.
As a further comparison, consider that Brännström gets paid the same amount no matter where he's assigned. However, regardless of this, it's something which Bains should anticipate continuing to be a regular occurrence.
For what it's worth, Bains is in the final season of a three-year contract, after which he becomes a restricted free agent. He continues to make excellent progress with the Canucks after being signed as an undrafted free agent, including scoring his first NHL goal on Saturday night, which also doubled as the game-winner against the Pittsburgh Penguins.