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

[BCNate]

If by sitting you mean having your f***ing hip cut open, sure.

Also sorry for putting together a good roster? Sorry your team isn't deep.

I have zero issue with what TBL did, not sure why you are directing that at me.

 

[edog37]

I thought we were talking about whether or not anyone else cares.

outside of this message board, no one cares.

 

[GermanSpitfire]

With Dougie Hamilton’s comments today, how are we feeling about this?

 

[Lunatik]

I 100% agree. The cap should remain in effect for the entire year. Why it dissapears for the playoffs is beyond me and makes no sense.

It makes prefect sense, they want it to be calculated daily and you can't do that and include the playoffs because every team will have a different length to their season.

 

[Lunatik]

With Dougie Hamilton’s comments today, how are we feeling about this?

It's not a big deal and some are blowing it out of proportion. Like one team every 5 years ends up doing this because injuries line up in such a way, it's not a problem,

 

[Saucechucker99]

Cap should remain in effect for playoffs, or there should be a limit for how much you can go over. 17 mil over for Tampa is a joke.

I am not trying to say Kuch wasn’t injured and required extended time off for his surgery. But it is pretty naive to think the timing of it all was not by design.

 

[Crazy8oooo]

Oh god this again.


Teams are allowed equal footing ie equal rules to ice the best team *they’re capable of (as in, do you draft better, sign better contracts, generally do things better? That’s not unfair)

you’re allowed to use all the cap space you are allowed to ice a competitive team 90% of the season to make the playoffs. The rules dont change because a team has a better roster.

unless you have some evidence the injuries are faked, and or that the NHL didn’t/isn’t following the normal protocol they set to evaluate all IR appointments, what “seems like they’re” abusing the rule everyone has?


Think about the trade deadline, how does forcing cap space to be used help small teams? They have injuries too, you want teams to ice AHL rosters because of unfortunate number of injuries, when they could have acquired a good player?

what if the injured player doesn’t return? They don’t always.

Easy fix...upon the start of the playoffs, each team submits their cap compliant lineup. If the injured player is good to go, he's included on the playoff roster, but counts against the cap. That would help prevent teams from loading up and playing at an advantage throughout the playoffs.

 

[Lunatik]

Cap should remain in effect for playoffs, or there should be a limit for how much you can go over. 17 mil over for Tampa is a joke.

I am not trying to say Kuch wasn’t injured and required extended time off for his surgery. But it is pretty naive to think the timing of it all was not by design.

That 17 million is extremely misleading, they currently have a 34 man roster and only 19 of those players played against Carolina and 20 total. The number is closer to 8.5m

 

[Lunatik]

Easy fix...upon the start of the playoffs, each team submits their cap compliant lineup. If the injured player is good to go, he's included on the playoff roster, but counts against the cap. That would help prevent teams from loading up and playing at an advantage throughout the playoffs.

How is that an easy fix? You have to completely revamp the way the cap is calculated which requires changing the CBA

 

[Crazy8oooo]

How is that an easy fix? You have to completely revamp the way the cap is calculated which requires changing the CBA

Why does it need to be revamped? They'd just carry the cap that was in effect until the end of the season, into the playoffs. If an injured player who makes $5 million returns, then you must remove $5 million in order to add him. Just like when they return during the season, you must remove player(s) to activate someone.

 

[Saucechucker99]

That 17 million is extremely misleading, they currently have a 34 man roster and only 19 of those players played against Carolina and 20 total. The number is closer to 8.5m

Fair enough. I just read the article with Hamilton’s comments and it said that they were 17.3 over and assumed it was accurate.

I’m just a jealous stars fan still living in 2020.

 

[Ol' Jase]

LTIR just needs to apply to the playoffs as well. When a player plays, it counts towards the cap.

It’s really not that hard at all. Cap needs to be in play until the Cup is awarded.

 

[M88K]

Man for all of Tampa's "Gaming the system" they sure did it poorly, they had over 5mil in LTIR they could have used on yet another player.
Lousy cheaters are even lousy at cheating....



Get over it.
It isn't a problem, the roster they actually ice, isn't 18million over the cap.

They have
24.737 to their 6 dressed defensemen
10.8 to Goalies
53.791 to their 12 forwards.
which
Totals out at 89.328 mil for their 20man dress roster.
They are 7.28mil over the "cap" with the roster they are actually using.

For the Cap should count in the PO Crowd.
They have 7.475 of LTIR space from the Gaborik and Nilsson contracts, so the roster they are dressing would even cap compliant in those circumstances.


And if you want to get even more technical, they have 5.736mil in their LTIR relief pool that is unused, so, Yes they would technically have to sit 1.5mil in cap hits out of the lineup to be "compliant" but again, it isn't some extreme number for them to be compliant.
That's basically swapping McElhinney for one of their 700k ahl goalies, and swapping Rutta with Cleasson.

 

[KevFu]

I am not trying to say Kuch wasn’t injured and required extended time off for his surgery. But it is pretty naive to think the timing of it all was not by design.

He was injured, he took time to get back. And they looked at where they were in the standings and thanks to CBJ's bad season, they basically kept him out of the lineup an extra month to go buy more players. And that is what has people upset. He was in practice, wearing a contact jersey for like 6 weeks before he was activated. I know guys need time to go from "I can be on the ice in practice" to "I'm 100% to play an NHL game" but it was blatantly obvious what they were doing.

THAT is really the issue. I have no problem with the rules being what they are, because 99% of teams would be screwed and miss the playoffs if they lost elite talent like Kucherov and Stamkos for the regular season.

Like, the Islanders were 4th and 3rd in the NHL in points at the time of Adam Pelech's injury last year and Anders Lee's injury this year. They finished 11th and 12th in the NHL in points, and if there were 82-game seasons each time, them getting into the playoffs might have been dicey both years (2020 more than this year).

And the Islanders are using Boychuk on LTIR instead of retirement for the cap space benefit.

 

[Nuckler]

He was injured, he took time to get back. And they looked at where they were in the standings and thanks to CBJ's bad season, they basically kept him out of the lineup an extra month to go buy more players. And that is what has people upset. He was in practice, wearing a contact jersey for like 6 weeks before he was activated. I know guys need time to go from "I can be on the ice in practice" to "I'm 100% to play an NHL game" but it was blatantly obvious what they were doing.

THAT is really the issue. I have no problem with the rules being what they are, because 99% of teams would be screwed and miss the playoffs if they lost elite talent like Kucherov and Stamkos for the regular season.

Like, the Islanders were 4th and 3rd in the NHL in points at the time of Adam Pelech's injury last year and Anders Lee's injury this year. They finished 11th and 12th in the NHL in points, and if there were 82-game seasons each time, them getting into the playoffs might have been dicey both years (2020 more than this year).

And the Islanders are using Boychuk on LTIR instead of retirement for the cap space benefit.

An easy fix for this would just be that once a player is cleared to practice with the team(meaning getting close to return) their cap hit applies to the teams cap. No more having a guy practice with the team for 6 weeks before he's activated

 

[M88K]

He was injured, he took time to get back. And they looked at where they were in the standings and thanks to CBJ's bad season, they basically kept him out of the lineup an extra month to go buy more players. And that is what has people upset. He was in practice, wearing a contact jersey for like 6 weeks before he was activated. I know guys need time to go from "I can be on the ice in practice" to "I'm 100% to play an NHL game" but it was blatantly obvious what they were doing.

THAT is really the issue. I have no problem with the rules being what they are, because 99% of teams would be screwed and miss the playoffs if they lost elite talent like Kucherov and Stamkos for the regular season.

Like, the Islanders were 4th and 3rd in the NHL in points at the time of Adam Pelech's injury last year and Anders Lee's injury this year. They finished 11th and 12th in the NHL in points, and if there were 82-game seasons each time, them getting into the playoffs might have been dicey both years (2020 more than this year).

And the Islanders are using Boychuk on LTIR instead of retirement for the cap space benefit.

The Stars did the same thing with Seguin.
He had the same surgery as Kucherov (plus another one on top of that on his knee)
He had it earlier than Kucherov did, and was back at practice weeks before he dressed for a game, all the while the team was fighting for a PO spot. You think they wouldn't have liked to insert him into the lineup a couple weeks before they did, to put them over the top in the PO pursuit?
All in all, despite having surgery over a month earlier, he made it back in time to potentially play for 5 games, he played in 3. They were 100% missing the PO and sat him for the last 2 to give him even more time to recover.

 

[BoltSTH]

If a team had a GM that is smart enough to use the CBA for the maximum benefit of that team, and an owner willing to pay for it, that is not circumvention but a GM doing his job, and an owner committed to winning.

 

[KevFu]

An easy fix for this would just be that once a player is cleared to practice with the team(meaning getting close to return) their cap hit applies to the teams cap. No more having a guy practice with the team for 6 weeks before he's activated

Right, but the rule now is that teams aren't allowed to keep healthy players on IR for cap circumvention, but no one is going to get called on that, ever.

They're not going to change the rules because no team is dumb enough to purposefully try what the Lightning did.

 

[Captain97]

If a team had a GM that is smart enough to use the CBA for the maximum benefit of that team, and an owner willing to pay for it, that is not circumvention but a GM doing his job, and an owner committed to winning.

I said this in another thread we shouldn't be mad at Tampa.

Be mad at:

The NHL for writing the rules to allow it

And

Your favourite team's GM for not doing it first.

 

[KevFu]

I said this in another thread we shouldn't be mad at Tampa.

Be mad at:

The NHL for writing the rules to allow it

And

Your favourite team's GM for not doing it first.

See, that's why there are people upset. The rules DON'T allow it. There's a rule that specifically says you can't do what Tampa did with Kucherov, because it is cap circumvention. It's just totally impossible to enforce. No one is going to NOT BELIEVE a player or medical staff when they say "He needs more time." Even though everyone knew.

His timeline was always "Game one of the playoffs" and yet when the NHL pushed the playoffs back after he took off the no-contact jersey, his timeline moved with it. Cooper's saying "oh, he's wearing that jersey instead of the no contact jersey because no one likes the color."

It was all one giant wink.

It is what it is. Doesn't change anything for the playoffs. But probably should cost them a draft pick.

 

[WarriorofTime]

If you want to stop Tampa Bay, BEAT them in the Playoffs. Complaining about the rules is loser talk IMO

 

[WarriorofTime]

The Islanders series hasn't even started and they have fans already complaining? Come on guys... at least have some hope in your team.

 

[Xirik]

the Lightning are violating the spirit of the rules you say?

Better forfeit some draft picks!

signed
Still angry Devils fan

 

[WarriorofTime]

the Lightning are violating the spirit of the rules you say?

Better forfeit some draft picks!

signed
Still angry Devils fan

What the Devils tried to do was ridiculous IMO. Didn't they offer Kovalchuk a 17 year contract when he was already in his 30s? I get that other teams (Hawks included) were doing similar stuff but they just took it to a whole different level.

 

[GermanSpitfire]

What the Devils tried to do was ridiculous IMO. Didn't they offer Kovalchuk a 17 year contract when he was already in his 30s? I get that other teams (Hawks included) were doing similar stuff but they just took it to a whole different level.

Nothing they did was against the rules, at all.
Teams should have just accepted it and beat the Devils in the playoffs