Bondra's 05-06 bonus will count in 06-07

http://www.ajc.com/friday/content/epaper/editions/friday/sports_4484c76016ece0af00f7.html

Nice cap management by Don Waddell

 

Still better than New Jersey, who's got $7.1 million tied up in Malakhov and Mogilny unless they get some of that deferred to future years. Detroit might end up in a similar situation depending on how much bonus money Yzerman and Chelios actually earned - but if it pushes them over, we're talking maybe $150,000 at most.

Kozlov will still count $2.337M if my numbers are correct - the cap numbers don't change from year to year (with a few rare exceptions, none of which apply here). Atlanta is somewhere around $28 million going into the offseason.

 

http://www.ajc.com/friday/content/epaper/editions/friday/sports_4484c76016ece0af00f7.html

 

It is obvious you don't know anything about the Thrashers season. The new ownership pushed him to spend most of the money under the cap before the season started. Then when both goalies were hurt and the minor league guys were playing poorly, he had no choice but to sign the best available free agent: Steve Shields. It is the extra money spend on the injuried goalies that pushed them over the cap. Thrashers were very conscious of the cap and did not carry extra players for most of the year.

 

No excuses.The Thrashers missed the playoffs spending the entire cap and have an extra $1 million tied in the 2006-07 on a player who probably won't be there next season.I could have told Don Waddell that Mike Dunham was a dog and counting on him to be Lehtonen's back-up was a mistake

The same ownership group which gave Joe Johnson a ridiculous amount of money and went to court to remove Steve Belkin from the ownership group

 

A Ranger fan talking about other teams spending, this truly is the New NHL

Cut the Thrashers goaltender injuries in half and not only do they make the playoffs, they probably end up in the 4th or 5th seed.

I am no fan of DW, but the greatest cap hit came when he was forced to trade Dany Heatley. Killed the cap number, but he got as good a return for a player coming off a serious injury with some character issues regarding the accident than could be expected.

I expect Bondra to return, and the vast majority of spaces to be filled on the roster fall into the sub $1 million(probably sub $600,000) grinder/4th line category. The only relatively big ticket items needed are resigning Havelid, adding a potential Top 6 C, and hopefully one more defenseman.

Probably 3-4 roster players will be rookies who won't cost much.

 

Count me as someone who sees it as bad cap management.

Under this CBA, I think any time you see a GM spend close to the cap, and not make the playoffs, that GM is going to be deservedly feeling the heat for his decisions. I've noticed that this year, under the new CBA, that GMs are in the spotlight much more. Unlimited spending was a great way to cover up mismanagement in the past.

As for Atlanta, they spent like a contender, but didn't achieve like one. Yes, they had injury problems, but, by spending the cap amount, they didn't give themselves any breathing room.

As for the carry over, I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this system. What are the conditions for bonuses. I know it applies only to certain players (coming off an injury, or, over a certain age, I think). Are teams and players free to set the bonuses as they see fit, or, are they restricted to only certain criteria. Specifically, can contracts be signed with bonuses tied to team playoff success (like Hasek's contract, which as signed under the old CBA)?

If so, I can see great abuse of this system. Teams looking to make a major push in one season, and then knowingly rebuild the next can load up on players with low base salaries, and big bonuses. The next year, they blow the team up, and rebuild, but, they can put together a team that they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford ina cap world. If they go over the cap, they just take it out of next year's payroll.

I would rather have seen the excess amount spent be multiplied by a factor (say 1.5) and then reduced from next years payroll. Ideally, it would be cumulitive, with that factor increasing by every couple of million. That way, if someone tries a really aggressive strategy, they could lose $10-15 million in payroll the next season.

 

Regarding the bonus question in the previous post: from nhl.com "Performance bonuses will only be permissible for the following types of players: (1) players on entry-level contracts; (2) players signing one-year contracts after returning from long-term injuries (players with 400 or more games who spent 100 or more days on injured reserve in the last year of their most recent contract); and senior veteran players who sign a one-year contract after the age of 35."

My understanding is the performance bonuses are included in the cap calculations even before they are earned. The team can only exceed the cap by a specific percentage. As noted in the Thrashers example, the team is penalized by it counting against the next season's cap.

While there are some things Waddell could have or should have done differently, I can't blame him for some of the issues and not at all for the Bondra signing. He took on De Vries and Hossa's contracts plus dealt with the Kovalchuk hold-out. People would have blamed him if he did not get Kovalchuk signed, but it took a lot of money to do so, especially for a RFA. Signing Bondra to that contract for 505,000 with the rest having to be earned through performance bonuses makes sense (and the bonuses were both player performance and team performance as well as some tied to making the playoffs from what was reported when Bondra signed the contract). And I agree the Thrashers would have made the playoffs if the goaltending injuries had not made a mess of the season.

 

Correct. The only players who can get performance bonuses are:
- ELS Players
- 35+ yo vets on a 1 yr deal
- a player with 400+ NHL games on IR for at least 100 days in the previous season.

All performance bonuses (earned or not) are counted against the cap during the season up until it becomes impossible to hit them. The team then gets credit for the unobtainable bonuses for the rest of the season.

A team may exceed the upper limit during the season by up to 7.5% due to perfomance bonuses.

After bonuses are all paid, if a team exceeded the upper limit due to the bonuses, that excess is charged to the cap for the next season.

A reading from the book of CBA Chapter 50 verses 2 and 5

Actually there seems to be some contradictory wording there concerning the 7.5% performance cushion. Sec (ii) states that "under no circumstances may a Club's Averaged Club Salary so exceed the Upper Limit by an amount greater than the result of seven-and-one-half (7.5) percent", yet sec (iii) refers to "the extent a Club's Averaged Club Salary exceeds its Upper Limit by more than seven-and-one half (7.5) percent", which was specifically disallowed in (ii).

 

Note that it states "approximate room". Those are actual salaries for '06-07, which as we've discussed many times here is different from what the player counts against the cap.

 

It looks contradictory, but the discussion that the league had with the 30 GM's was very specific on this. You can start the season with an Averaged Club Salary higher than the Upper Limit due to bonuses (which at the time are unpaid), but when everything is tallied and all bonuses are paid, you still cannot exceed the Upper Limit.

 

These following cap figures(these are the averages) are from the Febraury 28 edition of THN.Mark Brender did feature where every NHL team stood are far as committments for 2006-07

Kovalchuk-$6,488,600
Hossa-$6,000,000
Holik-$4,250,000
Kozlov-$2,337,000
De Vries-$2,166,000
Sutton-$1,900,000
Modry-$1,824,000
Slater-$900,600
Coburn-$746,100
Exelby-$627,000
Hnidy-$600,000
------------------
$27,839,300 in committed cap dollars

Lehtonen-$900,600-group II
Slater-$1,064,000-group II

 

I didn't there was a rule concerning Ranger fans not being allowed to comment on certain issues

 

Great ... now I've gotta go track that down to double check some of the numbers I didn't have for sure this year.

 

Wow, where we you when Don Waddell needed advice?

At the time Nurminen got the your back up options were: Dunham, Potvin or Irbe. I think the team signed the best guy available.

 

This situation is far from being over, as the rest of the group has to make a fair offer to buy out Belkin's stake in Atlanta Spirit LLC. Both sides have accused the other of lowballing, and Belkin is now threatening to buy out the rest of the ownership. I think ownership has much more pressing issues than whether or not to increase the Thrashers' salary numbers for next season. The tug of war between Belkin and the rest of the ownership hurts both teams Atlanta Spirit owns. They've had to drop plans to add additional investors into the ownership because of this court case, as neither the NHL or NBA will give an approval for additional owners until this issue with Belkin is settled, one way or another.

As for the cap situation DW got the team into, hindsight is 20/20. Nobody expected the goalie-go-round that involved putting the team right up against the salary cap (even with the sending down of some of the players to Chicago on off days to save $$$). This was the first season under the cap, so the GMs of every team had to learn on the fly. Some fared better than others.