It's not Holland cap, it's NHL gm cap. It's what you have to do when a player wants a certain amount of money. Its how you have to do it in this day and age. The reason its 3 years long is because Datsyuk wanted that much money and could only get it by doing a three year deal. Pavel could have played for a lot less money if he was only concerned about his daughter
But it's not about the money.
True, we don't know what Datsyuk said. What we do know is what he did, which is that he agreed to a 3-year contract.
If Holland said he wanted a third year and Datsyuk agreed to it in spite of only wanting to play two, that's still on Datsyuk.
It's a 35+ contract so Holland would get stuck with the cap hit no matter how he structured the annual breakdown.
He was paid $10 MM, $7 MM and would be $5.5 MM for the third year.
The first two years had signing bonuses of $5MM and $2MM, which actually has some incentive to the player in terms of escrow retention, among other things.
Please notice that 2 of the 3 years are less actual dollars than the cap hit. All that says to me is that the GM was managing the cap. Dats was going to get his money either way, and clearly he doesn't care about that last $5 MM because he's walking away from it. He was paid an avg of $8.5 MM for two years instead of $7.5 MM for 3 years (which is more money in total by $5 MM had he stayed, so it's not just about the money).
entirely possible.
But then maybe datsyuk should have asked for less money if he wanted one year deals.
Why? This is a business, and he should get paid as well as other elite players in the NHL. He's the reason a lot of people pay a ton of money to go to games.
Let's say he wanted to play two more years, so he tells the GM two years and the amount. Holland is playing the cap squeezing game, so he adds the third year to lower the cap hit from $10 MM to $7.5 MM. The second and third years cap hits would have been less than the actual hit. That means something was going on in Holland's mind when he resigned Dats for that first year in terms of cap issues.
Because Datsyuk wanted 10 million up front?
Maybe or maybe not, but Holland may have frontloaded to get into a better cap position overall, and stretching it over 3 yrs vs 2 yrs (see my long critique above) lets him do that.
So I ask you as well--- why front load in this manner..... $10MM, $7 MM, and $5 MM (which Dats leaves on the table)?
Sorry if the idea is to call Datsyuk an idiot and his agent an idiot fine. But what contract have you ever signed in life without understanding, especially if you have a person right next to you that is supposed to understand every part of it as you are paying him a small fortune just to get it. That seems to be what is being claimed. I for one don't buy it. Sorry not getting there. He might have had a change of heart and maybe Holland should have protected himself by back-loading the contract. But I still find this situation falls at the feet of Datsyuk.
If he really wanted 1 year deals he could have bluntly only taken that. We watched Lidstrom do it. He was okay with the cap massaging and wanted the money more than likely. Only a couple people know, but pretty universally those of us that are over 18 understand unequivocally what signing your name to an agreement is.
Love Datsyuk, but I can take that out of this situation. It doesn't come off well for him at all. This has been an unmitigated disaster and seems to be continuing down that path.
Maybe he didn't quite understand the 35+ rule, but.....the GM can trade his rights, and presto! The cap hit is gone. The team only has to live with it if they can't find a bottom feeder (like Arizona) that needs to save money but has to hit the cap floor. Along the lines of that Pronger trade.
Finally, as someone else pointed out, this team is officially rebuilding. They barely made it into the playoffs. Zetterberg is a shadow of his peak days, and Franzen is unfortunately probably done forever. It is time to pay the piper for frontloading and signing those super long deals, and maybe the best time to do that is when the team really isn't much of a contender. That fantasy needs to stop.
