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When asked what the offseason might look like for him, Bergevin said: “It’s unchartered territory for all of us and, obviously, with the cap being flat and without knowing when teams will be able to have fans in the stands with revenues it affects the salary cap. So it might not be as it was in the past. Again, it’s not something that we’re making up. It’s just reality. Everybody’s going to have to take a hit, but I don’t know the extent of it, how it’s going to affect. But it’s something that’s very possible.”
Bergevin also has to look ahead to after next season, when Brendan Gallagher, Phillip Danault, Tomas Tatar, Joel Armia, Jeff Petry, Jordan Weal and Charlie LIndgren can all become unrestricted free agents, while Artturi Lehkonen becomes a restricted free agent.
“Like I always say, and I”ll say it again today, players make decisions for us by the way that they perform and how they play,” Bergevin said. “So, again, we’ll have some decisions to make. I believe we only have one UFA this year, but next summer it’s a different ball game. And, again, with the cap being flat we have to be very careful how we spend our money.
“It gets a little tricky, that’s why you have to be careful,” Bergevin added about the salary cap. “It doesn’t appear to be as much as people might think when you add the guys that you like to bring back and players, as you know, don’t come on a one-year deal. Players that we want to bring back we’ll need term and then we have younger players that also we want to keep. So we need to be really careful. It’s just not like as high as people might think and it goes around the league. You have to be careful how you spend your money, especially with a flat cap probably moving forward for the next two, three years.”
Bergevin boasted that his team surprised some of the “experts” by knocking off Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in the qualifying round, but said he knew they had a chance to beat them and he also believed they could beat the Flyers.
Turns out they couldn’t do that.
