Found this interesting, from the Athletic's
interview with Bill Daly:
What was the league’s perspective on the Carolina Hurricanes’ deferred salary with Jaccob Slavin and Seth Jarvis? Did that come across your desk?
Oh, yeah. It came across my desk. I’m not going to go to the merits of deferred comp. I will say that deferred comp is specifically contemplated in the CBA and called for in the CBA that contracts can be structured this way.
There are some things about the cap system that cause some interpretation to have to happen, which we shared with
Carolina in advance. We shared with the union in advance as to how we were interpreting the provisions. I’m not saying that I think deferred comp is the greatest mechanism in a system like we have and maybe in the future might be addressed in collective bargaining. But we’re midterm now, so we kind of are where we are.
The league doesn’t love the idea?
Yeah, it throws out of whack some of the other checks and balances we have in the CBA, which forces interpretations in terms of how we allow it and what’s permissible and what’s not permissible. The original deferred-comp rules were developed in a non-cap world as opposed to in the cap world, so they kind of were inherited, and so they probably need adjustment on some basis going forward.
Can it get to the point where it becomes cap circumvention?
It can be, sure.
Is that the fear?
That’s a long-term big-picture fear, I suppose. It’s less a micro-dynamic fear particularly because, as I said, we’ve had to make interpretations which I think will continue to be binding until we renegotiate over it.
Notably, the provision in the CBA was an inherited one from previous agreements without the cap, so this really is a loophole that just wasn't contemplated when designing the cap. And it does sound like the NHL will try and close it in a future CBA, so I guess we'll see whether we get whacked with a cap hit in year 9 of those deals.