Lanny MacDonald*
Guest
After seeing some of the threads that outline the shopping sprees that some teams are going to be going on (hahahaha) I thought I would burst a hole in these balloons early. The cap is $39 million, INCLUDING bonuses and benefits. This means that any player that has substantial bonus clauses in their contracts will have that full value placed under the cap. For example, John Smith has a base salary of $6.5 million, and has bonus clauses in his salary that could add another $2 million to his earnings, that whole amount will be included under the cap. In other words, Smith's contract would cost his team $8.5 million against the cap. With each individual bonus clause a team has on the books, it shrinks the amount a team may spend in reality. So fo all you folks considering signing Lindros and Allison to $2 million contracts, laced with bonuses, this is not going to work. The economic reality of the new NHL should start to hit hard in the next 10 days.