Proposal: Allow teams to trade at 50% off cap

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

I actually prefer the concept that teams are allowed to trade cap space.

Example: Los Angeles trades 2 million in cap space in 2021 to Tampa Bay for 2nd round pick.

They are. NYR traded Marc Staal (and his contract) with a 2nd to the Wings for future considerations. That's trading cap space.

 

[LeafGrief]

The owners want nothing to do with compliance buyouts. Nobody held a gun to the GM’s when they signed those deals. They put themselves in cap hell. Now they have to deal with it.

Well in most cases other than Benning somehow, the GM who signed the deal is fired and the next guy gets to deal with it. This whole, "nobody forced the GM to offer those deals" is looking at it entirely from a punitive standpoint and is not looking at what is good for the team, the league, the players, or the fans. How on earth is the Skinner contract in any way good for the league? Yeah, the GM is an idiot, but watching a franchise wither away and lose passionate fans is a losing proposition.

And you don't think offering them a way out will result in even more terrible contracts being signed since teams know they won't actually be stuck with them?

Looking at the Skinner and Bobrovsky contracts it's hard to imagine things getting even worse. But frankly, the GM who makes a $50m mistake gets fired. As the other guy pointed out, owners don't want to be pissing money away on compliance buyouts. If you screw up that badly with your owner's money, you should be getting fired anyways. I just don't see why a franchise needs to piss away the years of good players like Eichel, or watch a star goalie like Markstrom walk out the door because their idiot GM signed some boneheaded deals. The Oilers have wasted prime years of McDavid and Draisaitl because Chiarelli f***ed up and it's an absolute nightmare for the league. The Salary Cap is meant to promote parity, it shouldn't be costing teams years of relevance.

 

[LeafGrief]

No, it's the way of looking at things that is supported by the CBA negotiations. Teams agreed to the cap. They tried finding ways to finesse the cap before and a team will never be absolutely buttf***ed by a bad decision. Like Nashville was NEVER going to face a 24M cap hit in one year for Weber. That wasn't going to happen. But if you're going to offer long term deals, you have to plan ahead.

You are a Leafs fan who wants your team to be able to keep your high profile players and still add because you're not good enough to compete but you're capped out. Dubas did a really bad job and now you have to live with it. The league has been growing by leaps and bounds (before COVID) and teams signed these awful deals that you're so adamant will kill the league.

The league is growing just fine. It just doesn't need to give Toronto, New York, and Detroit a get-out-of-jail free card from bad GMing.

Lmao, the Leafs are in first place dude. And if anything, I'm a delusional homer type who thinks all of our contracts are brilliant. My team's rivals, the Oilers, the Habs, and the Sabres are the ones who are "buttf***ed" by the cap, not the one paying $11m to players top5 in the scoring race. Oh no Tavares! Good thing San Jose didn't get him at 13m otherwise they might fold the franchise at this point (this is a joke, Tavares is struggling but will be fine).

 

[coopooter]

I’d like to see players have some responsibility for their play. The players share is 50% anyway.
First time through waivers full contract
Second time through waivers pick up player for 85% with player losing 7.5% team waiving paying 7.5%
Third time 70% player loses 15% team waiving 15%
And so on

 

[Qwijibo]

Well in most cases other than Benning somehow, the GM who signed the deal is fired and the next guy gets to deal with it. This whole, "nobody forced the GM to offer those deals" is looking at it entirely from a punitive standpoint and is not looking at what is good for the team, the league, the players, or the fans. How on earth is the Skinner contract in any way good for the league? Yeah, the GM is an idiot, but watching a franchise wither away and lose passionate fans is a losing proposition.


Looking at the Skinner and Bobrovsky contracts it's hard to imagine things getting even worse. But frankly, the GM who makes a $50m mistake gets fired. As the other guy pointed out, owners don't want to be pissing money away on compliance buyouts. If you screw up that badly with your owner's money, you should be getting fired anyways. I just don't see why a franchise needs to piss away the years of good players like Eichel, or watch a star goalie like Markstrom walk out the door because their idiot GM signed some boneheaded deals. The Oilers have wasted prime years of McDavid and Draisaitl because Chiarelli f***ed up and it's an absolute nightmare for the league. The Salary Cap is meant to promote parity, it shouldn't be costing teams years of relevance.

The salary cap is a tool to reign in GM’s who can’t govern their own spending. Owners and players fought hard and settlers on a 50/50 revenue split. Compliance buyouts are bad for owners who have to write huge cheques only to allow the GM to turn around and sorbs the money again. They’re also bad for the players as a group. Compliance buyouts increase the owners expenditures on salary, that increase the players share. With the new CBA capping escrow the only way for the players to repay the share back to owners is to keep the cap lower. So the short term cap solution that helps a couple teams ends up extending the flat cap environment snd screws every team.

 

[JT Kreider]

Ya they will probably buyout Mathews at the same time

The Leafs must have lost last night

 

[LeafGrief]

The salary cap is a tool to reign in GM’s who can’t govern their own spending. Owners and players fought hard and settlers on a 50/50 revenue split. Compliance buyouts are bad for owners who have to write huge cheques only to allow the GM to turn around and sorbs the money again. They’re also bad for the players as a group. Compliance buyouts increase the owners expenditures on salary, that increase the players share. With the new CBA capping escrow the only way for the players to repay the share back to owners is to keep the cap lower. So the short term cap solution that helps a couple teams ends up extending the flat cap environment snd screws every team.

I appreciate that this is a well reasoned post that details some reasons why my proposal is unlikely to occur. The problem that the league is facing is that teams are getting screwed too hard and too long by GM's mistakes. Whether compliance buyouts are the way to go or not, I think the league needs to come up with a solution that will lessen the long term effects of a GM's mistake. Set compliance buyouts up to be outside the 50/50, reduce buyout penalties, something, anything so that teams aren't hamstrung 10-20% of the cap for years at a time. Even before the pandemic flat cap there are just too many teams screwed by the salary cap and that's not even the ones like Tampa Bay where there's too many good players. San Jose, Vancouver, and Buffalo are bouncing around the basement right up to the cap.

The problem is obviously GM spending. The Salary Cap alone is not enough to curb the ridiculous contracts and now it is having the follow on effect of crippling teams ability to compete. Some teams deserve to be in cap hell, but I think there needs to be a mechanism for limiting just how bad the hell is.

 

[EK392000]

Im not saying they have one right now, but give it two years they would love to do the proposal with Tavares

I see a lot of Tavares slander on here. As a Leafs fan, Tavares is a very unspectacular player that plays the game under the radar. You won't see him often on highlight reels but he will quietly put together basically PPG seasons with second line minutes. He is a valuable contributor and allows Toronto to have two first lines. His playing style also ages well because it depends on his hockey IQ and not physical prowess. There aren't many teams in the league where Tavares wouldn't be the best forward on the team.

 

[Qwijibo]

I appreciate that this is a well reasoned post that details some reasons why my proposal is unlikely to occur. The problem that the league is facing is that teams are getting screwed too hard and too long by GM's mistakes. Whether compliance buyouts are the way to go or not, I think the league needs to come up with a solution that will lessen the long term effects of a GM's mistake. Set compliance buyouts up to be outside the 50/50, reduce buyout penalties, something, anything so that teams aren't hamstrung 10-20% of the cap for years at a time. Even before the pandemic flat cap there are just too many teams screwed by the salary cap and that's not even the ones like Tampa Bay where there's too many good players. San Jose, Vancouver, and Buffalo are bouncing around the basement right up to the cap.

The problem is obviously GM spending. The Salary Cap alone is not enough to curb the ridiculous contracts and now it is having the follow on effect of crippling teams ability to compete. Some teams deserve to be in cap hell, but I think there needs to be a mechanism for limiting just how bad the hell is.

There are mechanisms in place.

Buy out windows. Trades where you can retain cap. Are they ideal? No. But there shouldn’t be an easy way out. Every team operates under the same conditions. A handful get themselves into trouble. They either suffer the consequences on the ice or give up a significant asset to ship the problem out to a team that has cap space. The salary cap isn’t new to the NHL. It’s the GM’s job to navigate it without some get out of jail free card. You can’t expect the owners to foot the bill every time a player doesn’t live up to expectations.

The simple solution would be to do away with guaranteed contracts but the NHLPA would never agree to that.

 

[Gliff]

Sounds like a way for rich teams to get out of terrible contracts.

Don't sign 8 year contracts if you don't want to be stuck with them when they go bad. You made the bed, now lay in it.

 

[Seras]

Agreed. Sharks have tons of awful contracts, but id rather teams like Toronto not be able to slither out of massive deals

It's funny how you say Toronto as an example when they have 0 bad contracts. By funny I mean obviously petty and jealous with an agenda.

 

[IceNeophyte]

They are. NYR traded Marc Staal (and his contract) with a 2nd to the Wings for future considerations. That's trading cap space.

But not really. For example, Vegas trades $3M of Flower's cap space and a 2d for a 7th from Red Wings. That would be a cap space trade. Or, within a single year, Vegas trades $2M cap space at large, plus a 2d, for a Red Wings 4th. The end result in an $82M year would be that Vegas has $84M cap and Red Wings have $80M cap within that year only.

 

[themelkman]

It's funny how you say Toronto as an example when they have 0 bad contracts. By funny I mean obviously petty and jealous with an agenda.

Its not a personal slight. They have the most money and would use this loophole to overpay and later rid themselves of deals. Its another proposal made to benefit huge market teams

 

[KingsFan7824]

Here's what you do. Guarantee a GM his job for X amount of years. Then the pressure for that GM to make poor short term decisions is decreased. Not eliminated, because there's still competition between GMs to get talent, just decreased.

The employment of a GM is pretty much tied to the performance of players. Despite their guaranteed contracts, you can't count on players to perform to expectations.

Same with coaches btw. Want more run and gun fun? Don't base a coach's job on results, which are again directly tied to players that you can't count on.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

Lmao, the Leafs are in first place dude. And if anything, I'm a delusional homer type who thinks all of our contracts are brilliant. My team's rivals, the Oilers, the Habs, and the Sabres are the ones who are "buttf***ed" by the cap, not the one paying $11m to players top5 in the scoring race. Oh no Tavares! Good thing San Jose didn't get him at 13m otherwise they might fold the franchise at this point (this is a joke, Tavares is struggling but will be fine).

How many playoff series have you won since you've "been in first place".

I'll give you a hint, it's just as many as Detroit has won since 2016... while not making the playoffs in any year. The Maple Leafs now are the early 90s Red Wings. Light up the scoreboard and be real damn good in the regular season and then lose early in the playoffs.

It isn't that you are bereft of good players... but you just haven't won a series with your loaded team.

 

[colchar]

Im not saying they have one right now, but give it two years they would love to do the proposal with Tavares

Uh huh. Right.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

It's funny how you say Toronto as an example when they have 0 bad contracts. By funny I mean obviously petty and jealous with an agenda.

Individually no. Toronto doesn't really have bad contracts. However, they don't really have any exceptional budget deals either.

Matthews and Marner both got a ton of AAV and a shorter term deal. And they just have a hilariously unbalanced team structure that puts a crimp on their flexibiliy. So Toronto just has a very mismanaged cap and had to dump some pretty good players for really disappointing returns because of it.

 

[LeafGrief]

There are mechanisms in place.

Buy out windows. Trades where you can retain cap. Are they ideal? No. But there shouldn’t be an easy way out. Every team operates under the same conditions. A handful get themselves into trouble. They either suffer the consequences on the ice or give up a significant asset to ship the problem out to a team that has cap space. The salary cap isn’t new to the NHL. It’s the GM’s job to navigate it without some get out of jail free card. You can’t expect the owners to foot the bill every time a player doesn’t live up to expectations.

The simple solution would be to do away with guaranteed contracts but the NHLPA would never agree to that.

I think it's quite clear that the available mechanisms like buyouts (under their current penalty structure) and cap dump trades aren't enough to salvage some team's situations. If we go back to my first post, I suggested one every three years for a team. That's not going to clean up all the mistakes in the world and a GM is still getting fired if they screw around with millions of the owner's dollars. The goal is limit the consequences of a bad contract. I don't think that such intense consequences for cap mismanagement is good for the league.

The owners DO foot the bill when players don't live up to expectations. The Canucks are paying Loui Eriksson every penny on his contract, James Neal is getting every penny of his. It would be cheaper for the owners of those teams to pay the buyouts, but they don't because the team desperately needs the cap space to ice a competitive roster.

 

[LeafGrief]

How many playoff series have you won since you've "been in first place".

I'll give you a hint, it's just as many as Detroit has won since 2016... while not making the playoffs in any year. The Maple Leafs now are the early 90s Red Wings. Light up the scoreboard and be real damn good in the regular season and then lose early in the playoffs.

It isn't that you are bereft of good players... but you just haven't won a series with your loaded team.

How brave and courageous of you to tell a Leafs fan that his team hasn't won a series. Simply astounding.

What's funny is that you hedged your post by recognizing that the Leafs have good players, which is the entire point of the cap arguments. If the Leafs end up trading Nylander for some depth or something whoop de f***ing do, that's not an actual cap problem, it's just shuffling the allocation around.

 

[TGWL]

What's stopping rich teams from overpaying for a player, then retaining half salary and trading them for a good asset to a team that didn't have the money/cap space to sign said player?

 

[Yuck]

I'm torn on this. While I believe there should be consequences to the bad contracts/decisions, I also don't think its in the best interest for the league, fans, the players as a whole or teams to be stuck with long lasting under performing contracts and a bad product on the ice. If the leagues money is stuck paying crappy players, its not being spent on the ones that deserve it. As a fan, I want to see the best teams on the ice, its entertainment in the end.

I would think someone more clever than me could come up with a plan that lets rich teams buyout contracts for less of a caphit, but pad the bottom lines of the poorer performing teams and improve their bottom line. Every time a big teams buys someone out, the smaller market teams get a kickback of some sort similar to a luxury tax that is/was in baseball.

 

[TGWL]

I'm torn on this. While I believe there should be consequences to the bad contracts/decisions, I also don't think its in the best interest for the league, fans, the players as a whole or teams to be stuck with long lasting under performing contracts and a bad product on the ice. If the leagues money is stuck paying crappy players, its not being spent on the ones that deserve it. As a fan, I want to see the best teams on the ice, its entertainment in the end.

I would think someone more clever than me could come up with a plan that lets rich teams buyout contracts for less of a caphit, but pad the bottom lines of the poorer performing teams and improve their bottom line. Every time a big teams buys someone out, the smaller market teams get a kickback of some sort similar to a luxury tax that is/was in baseball.

1 compliance buyout every 3 years, but if you use it, you forfeit your 1st round pick. Can only be used before the season starts and your draft placement is set.

EDIT: maybe 4 years.

 

[Favin]

Basically allow teams to trade contracts and remove 50% of the cap from that player's contract.

Anything is better than adding a compliance buy-out. Maybe in return, every contract that is sliced in half, costs that team their next 1st round pick. And teams that don't use, get those extra picks.

 

[Spazkat]

I think it's quite clear that the available mechanisms like buyouts (under their current penalty structure) and cap dump trades aren't enough to salvage some team's situations. If we go back to my first post, I suggested one every three years for a team. That's not going to clean up all the mistakes in the world and a GM is still getting fired if they screw around with millions of the owner's dollars. The goal is limit the consequences of a bad contract. I don't think that such intense consequences for cap mismanagement is good for the league.

Even with the "intense consequences" there are multiple teams in a bad situation due to cap mismanagement. I'm failing to see how lessening consequences is going to result in less people exhibiting the bad behavior. That's completely counter-intuitive This is like saying the way to discourage people from over drafting their bank accounts is to *lower* the overdraft fees.

If Tommy spends his whole paycheck on hookers and beer and doesn't have any left for rent, is he more or less likely to do it again if the landlord says "its ok we'll let you slide this time" rather than throwing him out into the street?

Yes, I get that some of these teams are pretty much completely f***ed but there really is only so much you can do to protect people from their own stupid decisions.. If it really bothers the owners, maybe they should hire GM's with a little bit of fiscal responsibility

 

[Barnaby]

I'm torn. On one hand, teams should get penalized for bad deals. However, on the other hand take a team like San Jose. They are buried in bad contracts. On one hand, the signed them. On the other hand, I can see being a long term fan and watching an inferior product on the ice. That's not good for the league/product. As a Ranger fan, I'm paying among the highest prices in the league to see a team that's barely compliant due to Staal (who was since dealt), Hank, Shattenkirk, and Girardi.

Again, what's the answer? Idk, but I can see both sides.