How the New York Islanders Squandered Savings from Letting Kyle Okposo Walk

The salary cap forces terrible choices upon NHL teams. After all the work that goes into identifying, drafting and developing a player, a professional club can find itself losing him at the height of his career for want of cap space to keep him on the team.

That isn't what happened with the New York Islanders and Kyle Okposo, though. The Isles had the money to keep Okposo on the team. They simply decided that they'd rather use their precious cap space on lesser players.

Whether Okposo's $6.0 million cap hit will be a good idea over the next seven years is debatable. He's had a decent start to his post-John Tavares career with the Buffalo Sabres, posting nine goals and 22 points over his first 31 games with the club. He's also 28 years old, and if he's only a 60-point forward now, the Sabres may be unhappy with his production at the age of 35.

That, though, remains to be seen. What we know for sure is how the players the Isles spent his money on instead have fared.

The obvious place to start is with Andrew Ladd.

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Like Okposo, Ladd is an established NHL winger. Also like Okposo, he got a big-ticket, seven-year deal over the summer, with his annual cap hit ($5.5 million) coming in just shy of the departed Isle. That's where the similarities end.

Ladd's Islanders career is off to a bad start. He has just four goals and seven points on the year, an 18-point pace over a full season. What's stunning is that his most common linemate is Tavares, and the duo has been given butter-soft minutes (three offensive-zone draws for every defensive-zone draw). The two still couldn't score, and they got murdered on the shot clock. Ladd's been a disaster away from Tavares, and Tavares ticks up noticeably away from Ladd.

Ladd's already 31, three years older than Okposo, and it's worth noting that his signing bonus-laden deal is nearly impossible to buy out.

If the choices came down to spending on Ladd or Okposo, there isn't any question as to which would have been the better decision. Yet incredibly, that isn't the only place where the Isles could have found the necessary cash to retain Okposo.

Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

The nucleus of the Islanders' fourth even-strength line and top penalty-killing duo is Cal Clutterbuck and Casey Cizikas. New York has signed both players to relatively recent extensions. Cizikas signed a five-year, $16.75 million contract over the summer, and Clutterbuck got a five-year, $17.5 million extension earlier this month.  

Both players are reasonably good in their roles. Cizikas is a defensive specialist, chips in offensively and plays a physical game. Clutterbuck is of the same mold, minus the offensive contributions. There isn't a fourth line in the league that wouldn't be happy to take those guys on.

The problem is that the fourth line is the fourth line for a reason, even if it does play a specialized defensive role. New York has an oddly flat salary structure, with Cizikas and Clutterbuck getting the same kind of money as players like Brock Nelson, Josh Bailey and Anders Lee—the team's key secondary scorers.

Nelson, Bailey and Lee are all still in their second NHL contracts, deals signed when they were restricted free agents. The Islanders could have used the savings that are one of the principle benefits of young players to retain talents like Okposo. Instead, they splurged on the fourth line.

It's true that defining Cizikas and Clutterbuck solely by their even-strength roles ignores what they do on the penalty kill, but as the leading components of the NHL's 25th-best PK unit, it's hard to argue that their short-handed prowess deserves special attention. This is particularly true when considering that the NHL's best penalty kill (Carolina Hurricanes) pays its two most used forwards combined less than either Clutterbuck or Cizikas will make this season.

This summer was a crossroads for the Islanders, with Okposo and two-way centre Frans Nielsen entering free agency. New York could have paid to keep them, or it could have taken the money freed up and spent it on worthy replacements. The Islanders chose neither option. Instead, they splurged on Ladd and their fourth line.

That New York currently sits last in the Eastern Conference is one indication that it has started to pay for those bad decisions. With years left to run on all three contracts, though, that payment has only just begun.  

Statistical information courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com. Salary details via CapFriendly.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.