Trade & FA 2024-25:

[KillerLeft]

1 Yes, those are the correct numbers. I use a 1M cushion, which is my guess about how they might be planning. There is no question they have a cushion number, and it is a bit flexible of course.

2 Correct. Nothing - no emergency, no injury, no opportunity -  allows them to go past the Apron, and it's a long season. Yes they can keep a smaller cushion, but I would not be surprised if internally they pencil in even a bigger one. Once you get late in the season, you can use some of the cushion on 10-days or a rest-of-season contract, perhaps on a development player. Or a rest-of-season buyout guy.

3 For our purposes, the minimum salary for apron will be 2-year (ie, player starting his 3rd year) minimum. This is the APRON cap hit for all one-year minimum contracts except a SRP playing his 1st or 2nd year (like Hardy). I have not seen a definitive chart yet for 2024-25, but I have 2,087,519 as my derived number based on the cap. You can't fit two of those into 3.7M of spending room, and if you cut into your cushion to do so you only have a cushion of about 500K. I don't think they would consider that.

Amazing info here, thanks!