I assume that everyone is technically within the written rules of the CBA. I'm sure the Sabres could come up with a thousand 'valid' reasons for placing Sheahan with a non-roster designation.
My definition of circumvention is not limited to the written rules, to me circumvention refers to many things that live in that gray area of the CBA, such as:
All of these are not strictly prohibited according to the language of the CBA, but IMO they are all abusing minor loopholes in the written rules and cap calculation formulas. Sure, understanding and working within the written rules is part of being good at your job (any job really). But as a non-lawyer, some of this stuff is just pure nonsense.
- Teams that trade for injured players for the sole purpose of LTIR relief
- Players that 'retire' but don't officially file their paperwork so that clubs can LTIR their cap hits
- Teams that make daily paper transactions to influence the cap over the course of the season
The taxi squads now just add another tool to perform these types of paper transactions.
Good comment. There absolutely is a level of interpretation to it, and neither of us are Gary Bettman so at the end of they day we're all just guessing.
I do want to point out that to my knowledge, your first two bullet points don't offer any cap advantage to teams.
- LTIR never gets you more space for healthy players than you had originally, so trading for LTIR contracts isn't upping a team's cap space. It does affect the real money that teams are spending on payroll, which is likely why they were added to the Tampa-Ottawa trade.
- Retirement wipes out the cap hit of players unless they're on a 35+ contract, so that would usually be the preferred route for teams. LTIR just allows the player to keep getting paid.