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By Thomas Williams –
For several years now, NHL teams have been using a salary cap loophole to ice the best roster possible in the playoffs.
Whether it is Nikita Kucherov on the Tampa Bay Lightning, Mark Stone on the Vegas Golden Knights, or most recently Matthew Tkachuk on the Florida Panthers; the very best playoff-bound teams have had players be injured enough to get placed on Long-Term Injured Reserve. And the timing of it is the most important.
For these examples, the player went on LTIR before the trade deadline, just in time for their team to load up with that extra cap space created with them out of the lineup. And then they make a triumphant return almost immediately in the first round and since teams do not need to be salary cap compliant in the playoffs, there is a sizeable advantage just because they had a guy out nursing an injury for a few months.
Well, the NHL and NHLPA are reportedly going to address this issue. According to Chris Johnston, this could include the existence of a “playoff salary cap” or something like that.
No further details on how this could work or when it could be in place, but at least they are aware of it.
Off the trail…
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By Tony Abbott
By Thomas Williams
Posted
FIRST
As for the playoff cap… do it.
Posted
Agreed that it’s past time to fix the LTIR loophole. The best option I’ve heard is to require each team’s roster to be at or under the regular season per-game salary cap. This will probably be seen as too restrictive, but hopefully a small (10%, not more than 15-20% for sure) increase can be agreed to.
Posted
Oh, and congrats to the Panthers, and to Sam Bennett for the Conn Smythe. Pretty sure we can put to bed any chance he’s coming to MN now, his price just went waaay up.
Posted
This will probably be seen as too restrictive, but hopefully a small (10%, not more than 15-20% for sure) increase can be agreed to.
Wouldn’t 10% be an additional $9.5M contract?
It seems like 5% should be sufficient.
Definitely shouldn’t be more than 10%.
Posted
Wouldn’t 10% be an additional $9.5M contract?
It seems like 5% should be sufficient.
Definitely shouldn’t be more than 10%.
Yes, agreed. I knew that the number shouldn’t be excessive, but I didn’t complete the math. 5% to maybe 10% should more than enough.
Posted
There needs to be a fix, the ‘honor’ system isnt working.
Personally, last season the Landeskog situation pissed me off the most. Yeah, I get it…its a phenomonal story that a guy blew out his knees to get a cup, and had not played professionally for 3 years and is then ready to go and put up 4 points in 5 games of the playoffs for the Avs? If his AHL conditioning stint finished up a DAY earlier, the Avalanche would not have been able to afford to get Brock Nelson at the TDL. Landeskog’s $7M aav did not hit the colorado cap at any point in the regular season.
Am i arguing that the Landeskog comeback wasnt an insane story and the dude being able to play professionally again is super fricking awesome? No…I’m arguing that the team prevented a healthy player from coming back to their roster in order to fit a TDL acquired player. That needs to be fixed.
Posted
IMO: Personally I don’t care if they have an unlimited cap space for the playoffs. As long as the team you ice is under that cap. Once you choose the team you want to ice for the playoffs that is the team you get unless an injury occurs at which time you can pick from the non-iced players to join the team. This would allow you to have a high value replacement, but not a stacked team on the ice.
Posted
Wouldn’t 10% be an additional $9.5M contract?
It seems like 5% should be sufficient.
Definitely shouldn’t be more than 10%.
I’m not sure why a team should be able to have a cap advantage over another team with the exception of an injury. A solution like this would diminishes the problem but does not resolve it.
Posted
I’m not sure why a team should be able to have a cap advantage over another team with the exception of an injury. A solution like this would diminishes the problem but does not resolve it.
I don’t disagree. It wasn’t my solution, I was only saying that if they use a solution like this, the percentage above the cap should be low, but teams would need to be able to add in for injuries. The 5% margin would give them opportunities to add lower cost contract players to fill in.
If teams entered the playoffs cap compliant, but had numerous injuries, you could allow infinite injury replacements as long as the replacements have contracts within 50% of the NHL minimum contracts.
What I mean by that is that if the minimum contract is $800k, you could replace any injured player with an injury fill-in who has a contract value of $1.2M or less. Even 100% above the minimum might be acceptable, but I agree that having an extra $9M player above the salary cap, or even $5M, seems kind of ridiculous. There are a lot of really good players in the $4M-$6M range.
Posted
Who are we kidding? The solution will be put into place the year the Wild use LTIR and have Kaprizov ready to go in the playoffs after having been injured for half the season.
Expect a multi-season cap penalty as the retribution for such a sin.
Posted
Fix the playoff format while you’re at it Bettman. Lose the stupid divisional format and go back to seeds, like everyone else.
Posted
Fix the playoff format while you’re at it Bettman. Lose the stupid divisional format and go back to seeds, like everyone else.
It’s a huge reason why the Wild haven’t made it out of the first round in so long. The Central is typically stronger on average than the Pacific, and the Wild typically have a fairly hard path in the bracket because of it.
That, and the games are late regardless of who we play, so that isn’t a reason to keep it.
Posted (edited)
IMO: Personally I don’t care if they have an unlimited cap space for the playoffs. As long as the team you ice is under that cap. Once you choose the team you want to ice for the playoffs that is the team you get unless an injury occurs at which time you can pick from the non-iced players to join the team. This would allow you to have a high value replacement, but not a stacked team on the ice.
In theory it sounds fine, but part of a limit is to provide balance. If a team is able to load up on reserves, then the owners with the deepest pockets have a better chance of having winning teams, because they aren’t losing as much talent/skill when a player gets injured, whereas other teams with owners who won’t (or can’t) buy the extra reserve players are at a disadvantage if anyone gets injured.
With the salary cap going up as fast as it is, there is already going to be an issue where smaller market teams will have trouble keeping pace. Doing what you are suggesting would make it even harder for those teams to compete, especially since the larger markets teams will be more likely to have owners with the wealth to buy player insurance for the playoffs.
LTIR is already insurance enough. I’m not opposed to adding something like $5M to the cap for the playoffs, but anything else and it starts to defeat the purpose of the cap in the first place. It shouldn’t be a lot. Everyone should be on a level playing field regardless of market or owner. That’s the only way to keep it fair.
Posted
LTIR is already insurance enough. I’m not opposed to adding something like $5M to the cap for the playoffs, but anything else and it starts to defeat the purpose of the cap in the first place. It shouldn’t be a lot. Everyone should be on a level playing field regardless of market or owner. That’s the only way to keep it fair.
I don’t think LTIR is insurance enough. Teams are abusing it and stacking teams for the playoffs. It is a good mechanism to allow teams to replace players that will be gone for extended periods …so I wouldn’t eliminate it. But why should that team be able to ice all the players once they come off the LTIR for the playoffs. The team on the ice should not be able to exceed the cap. If a player is replaced they cannot return to the lineup for the remainder of the playoffs. No player is going to want to be replaced and no player is going to want to sit in the press box during the playoffs. Yet teams do get injured and the reason for removing the cap is to allow that team to keep a full lineup.
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