Physicals and Contracts

[norrisnick]

What effect, if any, does not passing the intial physical (for a recent signee) have on a contract?

I can wrap my brain around the concept of a player being healthy, signing, and then going down and the contract being full and valid. But it gets trickier for signing a player and then discovering he's unable to play, or practice for that matter, right from square one.

The reason I ask is Greg Johnson with the Wings and his yet to be resolved heart issue (trip to Mayo Clinic and everything). It's only a one year $500K contract so I'm not really worried about the cap hit per se but more just interested in this chicken/egg issue. And from what I read he didn't even sign his contract until the day all the players came in for physicals, not that I expect there to be an "the ink isn't dry yet" loophole.

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[Ted Hoffman]

None. The contract is still valid - the only thing that changes is where the player can be assigned. Johnson can't be put on IR at this point unless he finished the previous season on IR (I think there's another condition or two that would apply, but I'm not getting into the gory details here) - he would have to be places on Injured Non-Roster. It really doesn't change anything as far as the vast majority of us really care, it's just a distinction used by the League.

The only possible out would be if the team can prove that Johnson knew about the condition before signing and didn't divulge it to the team - but even then, I can't say it would be nullified because the counterargument is that the team had ample opportunity to have Johnson evaluated and discover the condition before inking him.