from Luke Fox of Sportsnet,

Winning comes at a cost.

“When we’re not dealing with cap issues, we’re probably rebuilding,” Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan recently explained on Prime Time Sports.

“The better you become, the less peaceful it is, the more anxiety there is, because each decision means more and so you still have problems.

“They’re just better problems.”

Embrace the rebuild and watch your salary cap concerns tumble to the floor.

But try to win today, and you’ll sweat every penny spent.

So although the NHL clubs facing the greatest cap crunches took vastly different routes to reach their summer of tough decisions and inevitable roster casualties, they all have one thing in common: they’re striving to be on the ice come May 2020.

While we await an official announcement of the 2019-20 cap ceiling, we dive into the cap issues facing the seven teams believed to have the greatest challenge working with the league’s projected $83-million salary cap.

continue (teams listed are Vegas, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Toronto, Anaheim, Washington and Edmonton)...