Hello again my Salary Cap friendlies! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and healthy summer. Now though, the time is fast approaching…fantasy hockey is right around the corner. I've heard of leagues out there that have already had their draft, with some even taking place back into August. If you're one of those leagues, I'd pull your league commissioner aside and ask for a chat. Or call the cops, your call there.

For this week's Capped, we're looking at salary dynasty leagues where some players got a little (or a lot a bit) of a salary bump that you're going to notice right away when you hop back on your team page. We don't want you to have an expression when you open your team page like you walked out to your car one morning and saw a ticket under the windshield whipper, this is to get ready for the upcoming salary hike for certain players. To note, this will only pertain to players that are going to jump in salary coming into this season. Don't worry Brandon Hagel, we'll talk about you next season.

*For this article roster percentages will be omitted with most fantasy sites undergoing offseason maintenance as well as some fantasy leagues not yet renewed for the upcoming season. Cap information from CapFriendly.

Cole Caufield – LW – Montreal – 22 years old
Contract: $7.85M – Eight years remaining – M-NTC (starting 2028-'29)

*Previous cap hit $880,833

This is something that's common when running a salary cap team, a player is on their ELC and the parent club has to make a choice whether or not to sign that player in seemingly no time at all. For now, these are the parameters we're given, and the Canadiens made their mind up on Cole Caufield this offseason signing him to an eight-year deal which will begin to kick in at the start of this season.

Granted, they probably had their mind made up on Caufield already, and the cap hit might look large now but given that it will take him to his age-30 season and with the cap likely to go up (folds hands, lights candle, prays) even slightly significantly between then and now this is a win-win for the Canadiens. For fantasy this leaves us with some choices but if you drafted Caufield in a rookie draft you likely knew that this day would eventually come. There is a caveat, at least to start, and that's the likelihood that Caufield starts this season on IR. He has joined his teammates on the ice already after suffering a shoulder injury last season, but I don't think we can completely X-out the idea of an IR stint to start the season until we get concrete info that he's not or has played in enough of the preseason to make heads or tails of the situation.

Personally, I wish I had the issue of what to do with Caufield on my roster. I think the way he can create space given his size is elite and I think is just now beginning to hit his stride coming from UW-Madison into a regular NHL full 82.

Evan Bouchard – D – Edmonton – 23 years old
Contract: $3.9M – Two years remaining

*Previous $863,33k

Another player has graduated from ELC-University! Congrats to Evan Bouchard, or as someone in my Twitter mentions refers to him, "Evan BOO-chard", that always makes me chuckle. I wanted to highlight this one, not necessarily for a significant spike I do know there are those out there that like to allocate a certain amount to defensemen.

For Bouchard the good news is that this isn't really a significant bump, but I do think this is a good trial run for what type of fantasy player you're looking for. If last season and the season prior are any indicator, we can possibly project out a 40-point season for Bouchard and that's fine but given the company he's with we'd like to see that number higher. Last season he was the only defensemen to land on 40 points exactly with the company around him being Morgan Rielly with 41 points and Filip Hronek with 39. Not bad company, right? The games played though is what worries me, as Rielly only played in 65 games, and Hronek 64 following a trade that weirdly sparked more debate than any of us thought it would have.

What's holding Bouchard back from really being a top 25 defensemen in fantasy is just the situation he's in currently He saw close to 70% of being the sole quarterback on the first power play for Edmonton last season with 25% coming splitting duties in a two-defenseman man advantage with Darnell Nurse. Now, throw in Mattias Ekholm into the mix along with Edmonton shaking up their lines each game like it's a snow globe that could have a potential snag in output.

Troy Terry – RW – Anaheim – 26 years old
Contract: $7M – Seven years remaining – M-NTC (starting 2025-'26)

*Previous cap hit $1.5M

I know how you got here, person rostering Troy Terry. You probably were first on the waiver wire somewhere along the way of his 16-game point streak two seasons ago, and now one year and a $7M cap hit later, here we are. It's a big cap spike but I'm leaning more that this was a play for the future for Anaheim here, plus avoiding arbitration with Terry this summer seemed like a priority for the club. For us lowly fantasy players though, we must make a decision on just what to do.

The goal production for Terry wasn't what it was in 2021-22 going from 37 goals down to 23 and while I could give you some fancy analytic stat on what may have hindered his goal production, I think what you need to know is this: He plays for Anaheim. I don't care what the records said at the end of last season, I watched more Ducks hockey last season than the average bear and I'm telling you all, this was the worst team in the NHL. I can say that too as I'm a 'Hawks fan.

This was a club that had trouble getting up and down the ice and lead the NHL in goals against per attempt, but what is surprising here is the Ducks were actually alright at making sure Terry started most of his shifts in the offensive zone at 65.5% of his shifts, over ten points higher than the year prior. For those on the fence of what to do I think we can predict out his fantasy production in two "best case" scenarios. One is he'll likely be the trigger man on his line, and the second being he might be in a good spot to bridge this club on whatever wave of talent is coming next. What will help his production is playing alongside Trevor Zegras…who still has yet to sign.


*For continued fantasy news and notes, follow me on Twitter @ndySanz.