Pavel Buchnevich
Drury and Laviolette Must Go
I'll start off by saying this is not another cap circumvention thread. I'm not trying to drag the Lightning, Hawks, or any team other team for how they've maneuvered the cap.
However, it seems abundantly clear that there's no real danger in the current iteration of the league of being cap compliant. Whether its teams putting players on LTIR for unquestionable or questionable reasons, having injury timelines line up right with the start of the playoffs, teams trading away a player they could manage to trade away, giving up picks/prospects to take a contract, players taking discounts right when a team needs it, teams buying out a player when they need the cap space, we've seen so many teams, such as the Lightning, Hawks, Leafs, Islanders, Knights skirt the cap very closely when many people thought they wouldn't be able to come in below the cap ceiling.
If there's no real danger of being above the cap, why should teams not attempt to spend at least to the limit? And when the occasional circumstance comes up that you need to budget above it to keep certain players, recent history tells us that you are going to find some solution to become cap compliant.
Does the league need to address this? Because right now teams are not scared off by the cap ceiling. Tightening up on some of these loopholes that teams use might be needed. Otherwise, the cap ceiling is just an abstract idea that isn't relevant towards roster construction. Teams know they can always afford to keep all the main players they want to. There's no real incentive to believe a core player or even a main secondary player won't fit within the cap of a team.
However, it seems abundantly clear that there's no real danger in the current iteration of the league of being cap compliant. Whether its teams putting players on LTIR for unquestionable or questionable reasons, having injury timelines line up right with the start of the playoffs, teams trading away a player they could manage to trade away, giving up picks/prospects to take a contract, players taking discounts right when a team needs it, teams buying out a player when they need the cap space, we've seen so many teams, such as the Lightning, Hawks, Leafs, Islanders, Knights skirt the cap very closely when many people thought they wouldn't be able to come in below the cap ceiling.
If there's no real danger of being above the cap, why should teams not attempt to spend at least to the limit? And when the occasional circumstance comes up that you need to budget above it to keep certain players, recent history tells us that you are going to find some solution to become cap compliant.
Does the league need to address this? Because right now teams are not scared off by the cap ceiling. Tightening up on some of these loopholes that teams use might be needed. Otherwise, the cap ceiling is just an abstract idea that isn't relevant towards roster construction. Teams know they can always afford to keep all the main players they want to. There's no real incentive to believe a core player or even a main secondary player won't fit within the cap of a team.