Salary Cap: 17-18 Performance Bonuses

[Deleted member 27798]

Capfriendly lists 6.35m in performance bonuses for 17-18. Anyone know who was these bonuses in their contract and what they are?

Also, what happens if all bonuses are achieved and the Sabres don't have the cap space for them?

Thanks!

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[Icicle]

You can highlight the icon next to the player to see it broken down.

If cap space isn't there it can roll over into next year. That would be disastrous for us and must be avoided.

 

[Zip15]

You can highlight the icon next to the player to see it broken down.

If cap space isn't there it can roll over into next year. That would be disastrous for us and must be avoided.

While they should be accounted for, being paralyzed by possible overages is silly. The big money is in the Schedule B bonuses - this is where Eichel lost $2m on the final day of the season by not finishing in the top-10 in points/game - but a guy like Reinhart is very unlikely to hit his $1.8m Schedule B bonus (assuming, like Jack's, it's a top-10 league finish in a category or categories like points/game). I like Sam, but he's a long shot to finish in the top-10 of counting number categories, and it'd be silly to carve out $1.8m in the event such an unlikelihood occurs.

I'm not saying spend to the cap. Indeed, I think it's very likely that Eichel hits his Schedule B bonus this year. But I wouldn't carve out too much more than about $3+ million for the bonuses. And it wouldn't be disastrous if we had to roll over a few hundred thousand in cap space.

 

[Ace]

Last year we couldn't even practice with full squads sometimes because we pushed it to the cap. To finish 17 points out. Imagine if we had been close and couldn't add at the deadline.

Leave the space.

 

[dotcommunism]

I feel like this has become a sort of hobby horse of mine, but CapFriendly doesn't (and possibly can't) accurately model the way that performance bonuses work.

To put it relatively simply, performance bonuses that are reachable count against the cap, even if they have yet to be reached. However, teams are allowed to exceed the cap by up to 7.5% of the upper limit solely due to performance bonuses (this is called the bonus cushion). The way that CapFriendly does things, however, is to pretend that performance bonuses don't count against the cap. For teams whose bonuses total to less than 7.5% of the upper limit, this model works fine. However, that doesn't apply to Buffalo.

7.5% of this year's upper limit is $5.625M. Buffalo's performance bonuses for Eichel, Reinhart and Antipin total $6.35M. So, what this means in practice is that Buffalo has, at minimum, $725k less in usable cap space than what you will see on CapFriendly. This amount goes up if more players with reachable performance bonuses are called up. This is part of the problem Buffalo had last year, as Eichel and Reinhart were eating up the entire bonus cushion. Any time Buffalo called up a player with bonuses (for these purposes, exclusively ELC players, but not necessarily all of them) they had to account for the full cap hit including bonuses not just the cap hit you see on CapFriendly.

An interesting note is that bonus overages don't count as a cap charge for the next season, they actually reduce a team's upper limit for that season. As a consequence, if I am interpreting things correctly, that means a team that had a bonus overage the prior season will have a smaller bonus cushion.

 

[Husko]

Last year we couldn't even practice with full squads sometimes because we pushed it to the cap. To finish 17 points out. Imagine if we had been close and couldn't add at the deadline.

Leave the space.

I think this was much less a real thing than Paul Hamilton made it seem.

 

[brian_griffin]

Last year we couldn't even practice with full squads sometimes because we pushed it to the cap. To finish 17 points out. Imagine if we had been close and couldn't add at the deadline.

Leave the space.

Source? I honestly don't believe that's true. And I don't recall any HOME practice reports by WGR / TBN Twitter that full complement of skaters weren't iced. I'm sure a couple road trips were light due to maintenance days, etc., and/or travel logistics for callups.

BUF had all of McCormick's $1.5M and about half of Larsson's ~$945k last season which they could exceed the cap by. The performance bonuses for Eichel, Carrier, Reinhart were about $5.6M, which was $185k over the 7.5% overage / allotment of the $73M cap. Without knowing the daily / weekly logistics the Sabres had to go through last year, I find it hard to believe BUF was in reality cap constrained.

Lastly, I wouldn't presume BUF couldn't have found a way to add cap at the deadline if they needed to for a playoff push. Teams figure ways to do that every single year.

I feel like this has become a sort of hobby horse of mine, but CapFriendly doesn't (and possibly can't) accurately model the way that performance bonuses work.

To put it relatively simply, performance bonuses that are reachable count against the cap, even if they have yet to be reached. However, teams are allowed to exceed the cap by up to 7.5% of the upper limit solely due to performance bonuses (this is called the bonus cushion). The way that CapFriendly does things, however, is to pretend that performance bonuses don't count against the cap. For teams whose bonuses total to less than 7.5% of the upper limit, this model works fine. However, that doesn't apply to Buffalo.

7.5% of this year's upper limit is $5.625M. Buffalo's performance bonuses for Eichel, Reinhart and Antipin total $6.35M. So, what this means in practice is that Buffalo has, at minimum, $725k less in usable cap space than what you will see on CapFriendly. This amount goes up if more players with reachable performance bonuses are called up. This is part of the problem Buffalo had last year, as Eichel and Reinhart were eating up the entire bonus cushion. Any time Buffalo called up a player with bonuses (for these purposes, exclusively ELC players, but not necessarily all of them) they had to account for the full cap hit including bonuses not just the cap hit you see on CapFriendly.

An interesting note is that bonus overages don't count as a cap charge for the next season, they actually reduce a team's upper limit for that season. As a consequence, if I am interpreting things correctly, that means a team that had a bonus overage the prior season will have a smaller bonus cushion.

that's exactly how I understand it as well.

 

[sincerity0]

I don't think the Sabres ever practiced excluding players because of the cap.. but they did send players to Roch on off days to loosen the cap. Either way it's not a good situation

 

[dotcommunism]

BUF had all of McCormick's $1.5M and about half of Larsson's ~$945k last season which they could exceed the cap by. The performance bonuses for Eichel, Carrier, Reinhart were about $5.6M, which was $185k over the 7.5% overage / allotment of the $73M cap. Without knowing the daily / weekly logistics the Sabres had to go through last year, I find it hard to believe BUF was in reality cap constrained.

Early in the season, when Buffalo had a ton of injuries, cap space was definitely tight. Murray said as much. I don't particularly recall them every practicing shorthanded, but they weren't really able to carry extra guys.

At no point last season did the Sabres use LTIR. They could have, in theory, sure, but relying on it early in the season when strictly speaking they didn't have to would have been far from ideal. The fact that the injuries occurred early in the season made things worse from a cap perspective too, as teams haven't been able to "bank" cap space.

Also, the major injury run occurred before Larsson got hurt.