The NHL has a BIG problem (Cap Circumvention via LTIR)

[Machinehead]

And the last 10-15 years in the NBA has been dominated by whichever team Lebron joined, GSW, and the Spurs.

Brady is literally pacing for a title every third year.

The MLB has solid parity, I’ll give you that

So for a sport with so much parity, the NHL should be outperforming the LeBron and Tom Brady shows, no?

 

[pcruz]

Yeah, don't really get the small market whimpering when every team is subject to the same rules.

Those same small markets that benefit from the big markets propping them up?

 

[NJ DevLolz]

So for a sport with so much parity, the NHL should be outperforming the LeBron and Tom Brady shows, no?

Youre cherry-picking years

 

[Machinehead]

Youre cherry-picking years

From 2008-2017, the Kings, Hawks, and Pens won every Cup but two.

The outliers during those years, the Wings and the Bruins, were in multiple finals.

That's a decade. It's most of the cap era. I'm cherry-picking most of the cap era?

 

[CaptBrannigan]

Not coincidence, but medically justifiable to delay participation if not 100%.

Guys play hurt all the time, but if you're cruising into the playoffs with three games left do you want a dinged up Malkin to play or to get some extra rest?

Also a ton of the Galaxy brain Kucherov takes are premature. At least wait until he is dressed for Game 1 to go off the deep end. That's not a guarantee.

And anyway - the Savard trade has nothing to do with LTIR. We got him by paying two teams a ton of assets to hold a lot of his money. We can just waive Schenn to fit him under the cap.

LTIR did factor in to it, as Rutta had to be moved onto LTIR to make it work.

 

[I Hate Philadelphia]

100% agree but I think this "broker team" thing needs to be banned as well. Players "passing through" teams so that they can retain salary on them and help a contender stack their roster is so incredibly stupid.

 

[The Macho King]

LTIR did factor in to it, as Rutta had to be moved onto LTIR to make it work.

Eh he is coming back. Any of our Dmen can be moved to make room for him.

 

[T REX]

I think this is a fair question.

I think the NFL version of IR is probably the way to go.

If you place someone on IR you can replace them but they can't return.

I think they have an exception now after 8 weeks...for lesser injuries.

A cap is a cap is a cap.

 

[CaptBrannigan]

Eh he is coming back. Any of our Dmen can be moved to make room for him.

Right, but when discussing the rules and what is legal, what is legal-ish, and what isn’t, you have to get the facts correct. Schenn was already on the taxi squad at the time of the trade, so not cap counting. So “waiving him” accomplishes nothing.

Without the Rutta LTIR move, the team is playing with fewer than the already diminished 17 they iced last night.

 

[TopChedder]

It's funny nobody was as angry when broke teams used contracts to get to the cap floor.

Interesting.

 

[Martin Skoula]

100% agree but I think this "broker team" thing needs to be banned as well. Players "passing through" teams so that they can retain salary on them and help a contender stack their roster is so incredibly stupid.

If anything it should be easier to trade a portion of a player's cap hit. Bad teams have unused cap space they want to gain assets for, good teams want to be able to get rentals without needing to play 3/4 of the year below the salary cap, why make it difficult for them? Everyone is better off - bad teams rebuild faster and playoff hockey is higher quality with more top-end players involved.

Edit: obviously this is for one-year rentals, Detroit signing a top UFA 8x4 and flipping him at 50% on July 2nd for a boatload of assets would cause too much UFA inflation.

 

[josra33]

It's funny nobody was as angry when broke teams used contracts to get to the cap floor.

Interesting.

I’m sorry but that’s a bs response. Plenty of people were mad at Zetterburg

 

[powerbomb]

I won't lie: this is a wrinkle in the rules that I've been confounded by for years myself. I wouldn't describe it a loophole exactly because that would suggest that teams could actively or nefariously seek to exploit it (which, given that it relies on long-term injuries to its players, is unlikely), but it's paramount to maintain the integrity and fairness of competition especially in the postseason.

On the one hand, the playoffs are more than two months of grueling attrition so realistically you can't expect to bar a team from activating a key player that recovers from injury when everything is on the line, but deciding the salary cap doesn't exist anymore creates a most unpalatable paradox.

I think the solution could be as simple as calculating the salary of dressed players any given game night and otherwise enforcing the cap as normal (or, at the very least, padding the cap by a million or so to acknowledge the complexity of injury management and giving teams some degree of flexibility). Want to load up the top line with that blockbuster replacement/rental? Gotta gut some depth to pull it off, or otherwise make some tough roster decisions.

Has anybody crunched the numbers for Cup champions to see if this has been proven to pose a material advantage over the years? I've always lauded the NHL for committing to a hard cap (I've long had a beef with soft/luxury cap leagues and wish other sports would negotiate more equitable arrangements, although that's another lengthy tangent indeed), so it would be a shame if such a correlation was indisputably established.

 

[Martin Skoula]

I won't lie: this is a wrinkle in the rules that I've been confounded by for years myself. I wouldn't describe it a loophole exactly because that would suggest that teams could actively or nefariously seek to exploit it (which, given that it relies on long-term injuries to its players, is unlikely), but it's paramount to maintain the integrity and fairness of competition especially in the postseason.

On the one hand, the playoffs are more than two months of grueling attrition so realistically you can't expect to bar a team from activating a key player that recovers from injury when everything is on the line, but deciding the salary cap doesn't exist anymore creates a most unpalatable paradox.

I think the solution could be as simple as calculating the salary of dressed players any given game night and otherwise enforcing the cap as normal (or, at the very least, padding the cap by a million or so to acknowledge the complexity of injury management and giving teams some degree of flexibility). Want to load up the top line with that blockbuster replacement/rental? Gotta gut some depth to pull it off, or otherwise make some tough roster decisions.

Has anybody crunched the numbers for Cup champions to see if this has been proven to pose a material advantage over the years? I've always lauded the NHL for committing to a hard cap (I've long had a beef with soft/luxury cap leagues and wish other sports would negotiate more equitable arrangements, although that's another lengthy tangent indeed), so it would be a shame if such a correlation was indisputably established.

If you went by game-by-game salary, the Leafs would have something like 30 million in space right now considering Matthews Marner and Tavares are making 700k salary with 15 mil in bonuses on July 1st.

Arizona also had a season or two where their highest possible theoretical on-ice cap hit (ignoring Datsyuk's ghost cap hit and retentions) was less than the cap floor.

 

[Peiskos]

Teams like Toronto should not be forced to financially prop up and keep afloat teams in the desert. That is a bigger problem in this league.

 

[TopChedder]

I’m sorry but that’s a bs response. Plenty of people were mad at Zetterburg

Goes a lot deeper than one player. Teams have been doing this for a long time to reach the cap floor.

Responses to these things are very team specific.

What one team does is smart and the other team is cheating. I say just leave it all alone, we already have parity.

 

[MatthewBarnabysTears]

What fans need to understand is that the cap has no real purpose other than keeping player salaries lower than they would be in a free market. Unless there’s a risk of widespread LTIR abuse breaking the rough ratio of player salaries to league revenues, the league won’t care

 

[rojac]

Teams like Toronto should not be forced to financially prop up and keep afloat teams in the desert. That is a bigger problem in this league.

MLSE might object to revenue sharing if there was no cap. But I'm willing to bet that because of the cap, what they are paying in salary + revenue sharing is less than what they'd be paying in salary alone if there was no cap.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Teams like Toronto should not be forced to financially prop up and keep afloat teams in the desert. That is a bigger problem in this league.

Too bad teams like Toronto disagree with you.

 

[powerbomb]

If you went by game-by-game salary, the Leafs would have something like 30 million in space right now considering Matthews Marner and Tavares are making 700k salary with 15 mil in bonuses on July 1st.

Arizona also had a season or two where their highest possible theoretical on-ice cap hit (ignoring Datsyuk's ghost cap hit and retentions) was less than the cap floor.

Obviously what I meant is that you take every dressed player's average annual value (AAV) as you normally do to determine whether they are compliant for that game. Thus, a team would have to scratch and shuffle some quality talent in the playoffs once injured players return.

 

[Oilerfan88]

What is this the nba?

 

[Peiskos]

Too bad teams like Toronto disagree with you.

I don't think they disagree with me, but rather that its a business and they're forced to.

 

[Flair Hay]

I actively encourage cap circumvention. The NHL's cap is stupid.

They sold you all on a parity narrative when the sole purpose of it was owners lining their pockets.

But it did bring much greater parity and made all the teams much more profitable

I love the cap, and I dont mind teams doing what they can legally to gain an advantage.

Tampa was in a pretty unique situation with Kucherov this year. Once they got rid of the fake long term contracts, everything has been good in my eyes.

 

[Machinehead]

But it did bring much greater parity and made all the teams much more profitable

I love the cap, and I dont mind teams doing what they can legally to gain an advantage.

Tampa was in a pretty unique situation with Kucherov this year. Once they got rid of the fake long term contracts, everything has been good in my eyes.

It definitely did not. This is just an NHL talking point that everyone bought.

We had a decade where three teams won the Cup.

 

[Flair Hay]

The league can't force someone to get a surgery as soon as they're injured. Tampa can abuse this by working with Kucherov to schedule his surgery at the start or end of the off-season to line up the expected recovery time with the last week or two of the regular season.

The only real issue the NHL can push here is that teams are incentivized to have their players make surgery decisions around the NHL schedule rather than their own health.

Not every team is as awesome as Tampa where they can afford to coast to the playoffs without their top player, either.

Nothing wrong with this stuff in my eyes. The more great teams within the rules, the better it is for hockey.