The KHL salary cap and Kaprizov

[Ernie]

Frank Seravelli says that Kaprizov has received an offer of a $10m+ one year contract in Russia:


However, the KHL salary cap is supposed to be 900m rubles, or about $12m.

Does anyone know how this would be possible? Does the KHL salary cap have some kind of exceptions?

 

[mouser]

The discussion I've seen so far is the KHL salary cap has some exceptions that don't count against the cap, but nothing remotely in the range it would take to get a player up to $10m USD.

- Up to 20% of the player salary in individual performance bonuses that don't count.
- Up to 20% of the cap in team bonuses (note: this would presumably be divided equality or equitably among all the team players, so any individual player is looking at about 1%)

 

[mouser]

Reading further through the KHL legal documents, it does appear that teams can offer an unlimited bonus that doesn't count against the cap for:
- Reaching the final 4 in the KHL playoffs
- Finishing top 3 in the regular season in Goals, Points or +/-

So CSKA could offer Kaprizov a contract with the potential for $10m+ in earnings, but it's not a guarantee he would earn them. CSKA is historically one of the KHL's best teams, so a final 4 finish is very achievable (CSKA has done so in 5 of the 12 KHL playoffs, including a current 3 year streak). However the salary cap is a relatively new introduction to the KHL so will be interesting to see how that affects competitive balance over the upcoming seasons.

Kaprivoz finished with the top goals in 2018-19 and 2019-20, so that's certainly achievable. But once again not guaranteed, especially if he were to suffer any injury and miss games.

 

[USAUSA1]

Sound like Barcelona......