dotcommunism
Moderator
- Aug 16, 2007
- 5,182
- 3,348
1) Expecting the worst case scenario out of the old contract is at best logically inconsistent and at worst willfully stupid in the Buffalo woe-is-me perspective. I trust you understand why I feel that given what I've outlined even if you disagree.
2) What's more likely, then, is a 3 or 5 million dollar penalty. You must understand why I feel this penalty is minor given my argument, even if you disagree.
3) With this likely 3 to 5 million dollar penalty over a period of 3 or 2 years, respectively, trading Ehrhoff for an asset is approximately equivalent to taking on salary for an asset. It's just that the salary taken on is applied later rather than sooner.
Firstly, you seem to be assuming that Ehrhoff is, essentially, a "rational actor". I don't think that's a particularly reliable model for human behavior.
Anyway, as to your point about the cap penalty being the equivalent of taking on bad salary now. Regardless of how accurate that may or not be in the abstract, you are willfully ignoring how highly circumstantial the appeal of taking on bad salary is. The reason that taking on bad salary now is appealing is because the team is not close to competing, and has a significant cap space (and in fact might need to take on quite a bit of bad salary to make the cap floor). Applying a similar scenario to an unknown cirumstance is not really equivalent at all. We have no idea what position the team will be in at the time that recapture would become an issue. In fact, the plan is for the team to be good enough that taking on bad salary would be detrimental. The fact that taking on bad salary now is appealing has no bearing on how appealing it would be in unknown future circumstances.
In fact, one could argue that treating the recapture penalty as the same as taking on bad salary now, in the circumstances the Sabres are in, requires that one assumes that the Sabres will be in similar circumstances when such penalties would take effect. In other words, that equivalence is dependent on the Sabres continuing being terrible with cap space to burn. I think one could argue that embodies the "Buffalo pessimism" that you allude to.