Ducks Face Salary Cap Hurdles: Potential Trades and Strategies

The Anaheim Ducks remain in active contract negotiations with forward Cutter Gauthier. If the reports of the talks are true, it appears the team will need to create salary-cap space to fit Gauthier under the cap. Gauthier turned down a $13MM AAV on his last offer, and with the Ducks having just $9.1MM under the cap at the moment (as per PuckPedia), the math just isn’t going to work for them after they matched the Philadelphia Flyers’ offer sheet to forward Leo Carlsson for $18MM annually. With all this money tied up in just two players, there will be a…