News Article: Zetterberg: I will probably not play until 2020/21

Mijatovic

Registered User
Jan 23, 2014
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Western Australia
Good definition for cheating. The only problem is that all teams could access the same provisions. What did the Wings do that gave them an unfair advantage?

Money is the limiting factor. Its the entire reason the cap exists so the super rich dont just buy their way out of problems.

What Holland wouldnt give for another $2m flexibility right now.
 

Mijatovic

Registered User
Jan 23, 2014
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Western Australia
No. They cheated by front loading a contract with more pay enticing a player to stay while extending a contract a few years beyond what he was likely to play for.
 

Heaton

Moderator
Feb 13, 2004
22,548
925
Auburn Hills
No. They cheated by front loading a contract with more pay enticing a player to stay while extending a contract a few years beyond what he was likely to play for.

Cheating means breaking the rules, please provide the rule that they broke. There was no rule for contract length at the time, that came in the most recent CBA.
 

Mijatovic

Registered User
Jan 23, 2014
2,102
173
Western Australia
If you dont get it, you never will. Just because its not explicitly forbidden, doesn't make something right.

Breaking the intent of the rules is still the same.
 
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Winger98

Moderator
Feb 27, 2002
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Cleveland
Cheating means breaking the rules, please provide the rule that they broke. There was no rule for contract length at the time, that came in the most recent CBA.

so, the NHL never voided the contract for Kovalchuk because the Devils weren't breaking a rule expressly written into the CBA.
 

StargateSG1

Registered User
Nov 26, 2016
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654
Cheating means breaking the rules, please provide the rule that they broke. There was no rule for contract length at the time, that came in the most recent CBA.

They broke the rules when none of them ever planned to play out the 1 million years
while they were putting pen to paper on those contracts.
 
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crashnburnluder

Registered User
Dec 19, 2010
1,115
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This will go unpunished. Just like Pronger and now Hossa. The only one that was punished was the Kovalchuk deal and that was strictly because he retired and wanted to play in Russia. I also believe they rescinded part of the penalties added as well. The league is letting the contracts that were signed previously to be played out on IR because it is unfair to punish a team for a rule that was instituted later in the CBA. The loop hole now is LTIR, and it is one the league allows to continue for this reason. Detroit will trade zetterberg when he is ready to retire and trade him to a team with cap space just like Datsyuk. There won't be recapture penalties. It is as simple as that.
 

Peter Tosh

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Dec 19, 2007
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This will go unpunished. Just like Pronger and now Hossa.
Pronger and Hossa left due to injuries, even though Hossa's injury smells funny. Zetterberg just raised the bar for what the league could stomach injury wise with these comments in Swedish press.

Detroit will trade zetterberg when he is ready to retire and trade him to a team with cap space just like Datsyuk. There won't be recapture penalties. It is as simple as that.
Pavel's contract wasn't front loaded like Zetterberg's is. A fishy contract structure combined with Hank's comments in the media may well force the league to take action. I don't know any previous case like this, where the player explicitly indicates that he's contract may not be intended to be played out due to cap reasons.
 

Heaton

Moderator
Feb 13, 2004
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Auburn Hills
so, the NHL never voided the contract for Kovalchuk because the Devils weren't breaking a rule expressly written into the CBA.

Good point.

They broke the rules when none of them ever planned to play out the 1 million years
while they were putting pen to paper on those contracts.

Another good point, but if that's the case why did the NHL allow the contract to be signed and processed? For what it's worth I agreed at the time and agree now that neither Franzen nor Z were going to play out their entire contract, that was the beauty of the deals. Now I'm against super long term deals for anyone that isn't a superstar.
 

Lazlo Hollyfeld

The jersey ad still sucks
Mar 4, 2004
28,161
26,454
Its a pretty bad attitude but not shocking one. American Sports is just a different beast where fair play isn't encouraged.

Oh please. What a baseless generaltization :shakehead

There are countless sports outside of the US that are hardly shining examples of fair play.

Fair play like what goes on in rugby? Or soccer games? Or cycling?
 

Lazlo Hollyfeld

The jersey ad still sucks
Mar 4, 2004
28,161
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so, the NHL never voided the contract for Kovalchuk because the Devils weren't breaking a rule expressly written into the CBA.

The NHL rejected Kovalchuk's initial 17 year contract and an arbitrator nullified the deal. There was never a completed contract to void.
 

Lil Sebastian Cossa

Opinions are share are my own personal opinions.
Jul 6, 2012
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Or perhaps the GMs should have known that CBAs don't last forever and started immediately circumventing the Salary Cap that required a lockout to implement.
And perhaps, they should have thought that 13 years contract that runs through the players 42nd birthday is a bad idea regardless of the rules, eh?

They did worry about the risk. Any article at all says "Hey, this is a great deal because of X, but it is kinda risky to sign any player for that long." Even ones written by the team for their website.

The risk is just mitigated for a guy like Zetterberg who you know is an everydayer of everydayers.

And everyone here who is talking about "oh, you violated the spirit of the rules" needs to wake up and join the real world. Whenever you deal with a finite set of resources (as a cap world makes you), you look for any legal advantage you can. You can say "Oh, they meant to circumvent the cap by these deals", but why didn't the league take that into account when they made the cap? I mean, it's not rocket science to come up with "AAV is $/# of years, so if we bump up the number of years, the cap number comes down." Sports are a business, clear as day, and in business, you take every advantage that you can happen upon.

The NHL lazily negotiated in the 2005 lockout after they landed the salary cap and left it wide open for something like that to happen.

It is their responsibility to enforce the rules. If they chose not to (which when they approved all of those deals), the rule is not being violated.

It's not up to the GMs to know what the league might deem worthy of punishment four or more years down the line. They can limit their usage of a loophole to their most vital players and/or not utilize it if a CBA negotiation is coming, but if there is a legal loophole, they are stupid to not use it. Them retroactively applying a rule to contracts that were previously ruled valid as written is not common and should not have been a thought in a GM's mind, especially in 2009.

Even so though, I don't know why this is such a thing. There is no way that the league comes down on Detroit when they've let Pronger do what he's done, Hossa has magically become allergic to his pads as soon as he starts making $1M, and so on and so forth. All sports leagues and whatever will always shy away from destroying/materially affecting a team even if the rules say they should.
 

Deebs

Let's swim to the moon
Feb 5, 2014
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What would you guys be looking for in return for Zetterberg? Anything you can get now would help in your rebuilding process and help with your cap situation.
 

Beltv

Registered User
Apr 13, 2017
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What would you guys be looking for in return for Zetterberg? Anything you can get now would help in your rebuilding process and help with your cap situation.

Not that he would ever be traded and knowing that "if" he did call it quits in 2 years we would be stuck with the recapture penalty. We wouldn't take any bad contracts back. I'd take 2 guys for sure on ELC deals that are close to NHL ready or already getting time and a draft pick. I'd have to do some more research on your teams players to give you names.

Most likely wouldn't work out though. He will retire in Detroit and we get slammed with the penalty.
 

Zetterberg4Captain

Registered User
Aug 11, 2009
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Detroit
It broke the spirit of the law and I can't stand anyone anywhere ever finding ways to skirt around a law or rule

I hope the league retroactively punishes anyone and everyone to tried or tries to skirt around league agreed upon rules.
 

Lil Sebastian Cossa

Opinions are share are my own personal opinions.
Jul 6, 2012
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It broke the spirit of the law and I can't stand anyone anywhere ever finding ways to skirt around a law or rule

I hope the league retroactively punishes anyone and everyone to tried or tries to skirt around league agreed upon rules.

The league accepted it. It wasn't like they tried sneaking a camera onto a sideline or bench where they hoped it wouldn't be seen.

All these contracts went to the league office and got approved until Kovy. And if what I read before was accurate, they had precedence to go back and invalidate the Hossa, Z, etc. contracts after the arbitrator ruled against Kovalchuk's and they instead took concessions from the players union to not pursue it.

It's amazing how many "oh, I'm so against even considering violating the spirit of a rule" people come out of the woodwork when something like this is brought up.

They closed the loophole on the backdiving deals and instituted the recapture. It's more than a little bull**** (and I say this knowing full well that we'd be ****ed by it) that you can get away from the punishment by an administrative action of putting a guy on LTIR when he's clearly never going to play again. But that's what the league has pretty much settled on.
 

TCNorthstars

Registered User
Jan 5, 2009
4,281
1,796
Lansing area, MI
It broke the spirit of the law and I can't stand anyone anywhere ever finding ways to skirt around a law or rule

I hope the league retroactively punishes anyone and everyone to tried or tries to skirt around league agreed upon rules.

I envy your restraint from ever speeding, crossing a solid yellow line to pass a bicycle, or jaywalking. Bravo!
 

Mijatovic

Registered User
Jan 23, 2014
2,102
173
Western Australia
Little different between that and a competitive sport. But of course, close your eyes and shove your fingers in your ears.

Red Wings deserve the recapture they will deal with. As do any others that embraced circumvention of the cap.
 

Winger98

Moderator
Feb 27, 2002
22,756
4,569
Cleveland
It's amazing how many "oh, I'm so against even considering violating the spirit of a rule" people come out of the woodwork when something like this is brought up.

Just to be clear, I'm not against Holland doing what he did. I'm just against it being glossed over.
 

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