Islanders Ink Strome

On Tuesday morning,, the New York Islanders announced that they have come to terms with restricted free agent Ryan Strome, signing him to a 2-year, $5 million deal.

Strome, 23, was coming off a poor 2016 season, where he didn't meet many of his expectations, scoring only 8 goals and 28 points in 71 games, ranking him 209th among all forwards, just barely scraping in as a pool-worthy player.  Most of the time he had missed in the season was due to being a healthy scratch, thanks to his poor performances.

This 2-year deal will act more as a bridge deal to something more long-term, assuming that he can put some good seasons together in the next couple of years.  Currently, my expectation is that he will be starting to find his stride again and his early projections have him in the 45-point range.  A lot will have to depend on who he is lining up with, as he had a good year in 2015 with John Tavares, who is currently getting a good head start to his season at the World Cup.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
John Tavares	5.500	Johnny Boychuk	6.000	Jaroslav Halak	4.500
Andrew Ladd	5.500	Nick Leddy	5.500	Thomas Greiss	1.500
Anders Lee	3.750	Travis Hamonic	3.857
Casey Cizikas	3.350	Thomas Hickey	2.200
Josh Bailey	3.300
Brock Nelson	2.500
Ryan Strome	2.500
Jason Chimera	2.250
Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau	1.250
Nikolay Kulemin	4.188	Calvin de Haan	1.967
Cal Clutterbuck	2.750	Adam Pelech	0.854
Shane Prince	0.800
Michael Dal Colle	0.863	Ryan Pulock	0.863
Joshua Ho-Sang	0.863
Mikhail Grabovski	5.000
Matthew Barzal	0.894	Kyle Burroughs	0.925	Eamon McAdam	0.925
Anthony Beauvillier	0.894	Devon Toews	0.925	Stephon Williams	0.925
Bracken Kearns	0.800	Matthew Finn	0.858	Jean-Francois Berube	0.675
Ben Holmstrom	0.800	Parker Wotherspoon	0.736	Christopher Gibson	0.650
Carter Verhaeghe	0.778	Scott Mayfield	0.625
Kyle Schempp	0.705	Loic Leduc	0.615
Ross Johnston	0.667	Jesse Graham	0.605
Alan Quine	0.613
Eric Boulton	0.575
Stephen Gionta	PTO

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system

The Islanders have not been shy on the spending this Summer, especially with the additions of Andrew Ladd and P-A Parenteau, but they had to be wise on Strome, since he had a down year.  Nevertheless, their projected 24-man roster, thanks to the injury to Mikhail Grabovski, they are only about $1.4 million away from the salary cap ceiling.  There are a few roster spots in question, so there could definitely be a swap of numbers here and there, but the Islanders won't fear the cap ceiling, especially with Grabovski's ability to hit the LTIR, if needed.