Keith Primeau still counting against cap for Flyers

[Ted Hoffman]

There was recently a thread on the Flyers board about how the Flyers were deferring payments to Keith Primeau to help with the team's salary cap situation. Understandably, this caught some people off guard - Primeau had retired prior to the start of the 2006-07 season, so why would he still be counting against the Upper Limit, unless they were still paying him? At first, I couldn't find anything about Primeau still being paid ... but then James Mirtle sent me this link:

http://www.nhl.com/features/insider/primeau091406.html

However, the thing that caught my eye was this comment:

The Flyers will pay the remainder of Primeau's contract, but it doesn't count against the cap.

Well, this didn't make sense. Steve Konowalchuk retired from the Avalanche prior to the start of the 2006-07 season, but the Avalanche chose to pay him his '06-07 salary and it counted against the cap ... so what was the deal?

So ... I wrote a few e-mails, and got answers.

1. Yes, Primeau did in fact count toward the Upper Limit for 2006-07. Since the team was paying him his contracted salary, he counted against the Upper Limit. [This is similar to the Konowalchuk situation described above.]

2. Primeau counted at his Averaged Salary of $3,166,667. Apparently the Flyers did file to put him on LTIR for '06-07, and have already done so for 2007-08 and it's been approved (subject to the team getting near the Upper Limit); it's just a matter of when the team chooses to exercise that right to officially designate him on LTIR (which will probably be at the point the team is as close to the Upper Limit as they possibly can get, so as to max out how much of his Averaged Salary they can replace).

3. Even if the Flyers restructure the payments to him, Primeau will still count $3,166,667 toward the Upper Limit for 2007-08. The restructuring of payments has no effect on how his Averaged Salary is applied to the Upper Limit.

If kdb would like to chime in with the official reasons, he's more than welcome to. However, the implication of this is that the Flyers probably don't have Briere or Hartnell "officially" signed at the moment (meaning the contract isn't on file with Central Registry) because they clearly wouldn't have the cap space to do it, given how it's calculated in the offseason.

The good news for Flyers fans? Primeau will be on LTIR in 2007-08 when the team officially designates him for it, and will be off the books for cap purposes in 2008-09.

Click to read more...

 

[GKJ]

Paul Holmgren announced that Timonen and Hartnell signed their contracts on July 1.

 

[hockeydadx2*]

They can be over the cap until the season starts, correct?

 

[Pepper]

http://www.nhlpa.com/WebStats/PlayerBiography.asp?ID=6163

Briere is already listed at NHLPA as a Flyer with a 10M salary, AFAIK NHLPA won't list players until NHL's central registry has officially cleared the contracts.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

They can be over the cap until the season starts, correct?

They can be as high as $55.33 million until training camp ends. However, all players on 1-way contracts count against the Upper Limit during the offseason, even if they were (or will be) on LTIR or weren't on the NHL roster the year before. Note that in the CBA's explanation of how the cap is calculated in the offseason, there's no mention of Injured Reserve - because it doesn't exist in the offseason.

It's why the Devils couldn't officially sign Gionta, Hale, and others last summer - because the 3 M's were still counting against the Upper Limit, even though McGillis was going back to the minors, Malakhov had claimed he was retired (he never filed it with the NHL), and Mogilny was going to end up on LTIR. If the LTI exemption existed in the offseason, the Devils would have had $3.5 million to work with last summer and could have signed a few players (like David Hale) to contracts ... but they couldn't because they didn't have the payroll room - which implies that LTI exemptions don't apply in the offseason.

 

[X8oD]

The Red Wings have been in the same situation with Jiri Fischer

They had just let him count against the cap becuse they werent ever close to going over. But if they would have done something to warrant requesting the LTIR be used, they would have filed it.