there is public evidence that Keith demanded to be in western canada for his son. If we trade him to Arizona or whoever, so they buy him out, it looks not genuine, especially if we sign him.
What made the Washington case ruled as genuine was probably that the Capitals liked Orpik but could not have his cap hit, so they traded him fully comfortable with him being gone forever. There was also no NTC muddying that up, and no public record that linked Orpik to the Capitals besides hockey. So in Keith's case it's hard to take it seriously when Keith agrees to be traded to team that is away from his son, because it seems like he knows he will be bought out and knows he will sign again with Edmonton. I bet those would be the questions the NHL would have for Keith in this.
The fact that they did investigate it in the Washington case tells me that there is a way to do this the wrong way. You aren't allowed to do this just to keep a player and reduce the cap hit.
The way around this is if Holland and Keith are both on board and say the right things. When Keith is traded, the messaging has to be that it is for a buyout, which makes Keith okay with it, and then Holland has to say that they are moving on and wish him luck, or even better Keith retires soon after, or at least public says he is contemplating it. Then, much later, we sign him. If at any point Holland says something like "we are just doing what Washington did" then instantly we'd get ruled for circumvention I think. Let's be real here to, this whole thing is circumvention. If Washington planned that whole thing out with Orpik, that was too.
I do think this happened before. Wasn't there a team that tried this with Lecavalier and the league nixed it?
