Street Hawk
Registered User
Circumvent
That 35 year old rule thing was put in to prevent teams signing older players to long term contract so lower the cap hit.
So, if they signed a 5 year deal worth 25 million, they'd only get a 5 million cap hit, but could structure the deal to front load the contract as much as possible, thereby giving the player most of the money upfront, thereby allowing him to retire with 3 years left on the deal. Player gets his money and the team gets a lower cap hit.
But, I think the NHL could have done it a bit differently to prevent teams from circumventing the cap this way.
I was thinking that they should basically say that if you sign a 35 year old player to a multi-year deal, he has to earn the same amount each season. So, using the previous example, he can only be paid $5 million dollars each season. He can't go from 8 million, to 7 to 5 to 3 to 2. Has to be $5 million each year.
But, I really doubt that would change anything. Now, teams just want to make sure that older player is going to play those 2 or 3 years that he signed for.
Thank you again.
So the benefits of buying out a guy with a 35+ contract are a) paying only 2/3 of the value over 2x years, b) getting the NHL contract back, and c) not having the stiff in the lineup.
That 35 year old rule thing was put in to prevent teams signing older players to long term contract so lower the cap hit.
So, if they signed a 5 year deal worth 25 million, they'd only get a 5 million cap hit, but could structure the deal to front load the contract as much as possible, thereby giving the player most of the money upfront, thereby allowing him to retire with 3 years left on the deal. Player gets his money and the team gets a lower cap hit.
But, I think the NHL could have done it a bit differently to prevent teams from circumventing the cap this way.
I was thinking that they should basically say that if you sign a 35 year old player to a multi-year deal, he has to earn the same amount each season. So, using the previous example, he can only be paid $5 million dollars each season. He can't go from 8 million, to 7 to 5 to 3 to 2. Has to be $5 million each year.
But, I really doubt that would change anything. Now, teams just want to make sure that older player is going to play those 2 or 3 years that he signed for.