For now, the Calgary Flames look to have a pretty cut-and-dried top-four on defense. Mark Giordano, Chris Tanev, Rasmus Andersson, and Noah Hanifin are all being paid at least $4.5 million annually to patrol the blue line for the Flames.
Then, there’s Juuso Valimaki, whose $894,166 cap hit could increase by nearly 50% if he hits on all of his $425,000 worth of performance bonus targets this year. The young left-hander is coming off two years of injury-plagued development but showed extremely well in his recent loan over to the Finnish Liiga with Tampereen Ilves earlier this year.