Vegas about to circumvent cap again? UPD: Mark Stone back practicing.

[syz]

I'm no Vegas fan, but the thing is, if he's not caught, is he cheating? They provided the necessary evidence he was injured, and this is the result. It has to pass league checks I assume, so if they ok it than what can you do? Every team works with the same rules so if it's exploited, every team can exploit it..

I don't like it either, but it's within the rules, so if they're the only team willing to tow the line btwn right and wrong to get an edge, that's just part of the gamesmanship. It sucks.

Having said that, I believe we can all say without a shadow of a doubt, every fan base outside of their own is probably rooting for their exit sooner than later, and all it takes is for a formula to fail once before it's abandoned. Recognize they've taken on alot of long term contracts to take their shot at present glory, it'd be all for not, and a costly venture if it doesn't work.

I'd bet that by the trade deadline the majority of the league could get a legitimate medical appraisal saying they were unfit to go out and play a contact sport. The reality is there's just no way to enforce the "validity" of an injury like this. Only real solution imo would be to force guys to sit out a few games if they're on the IR when the regular season ends instead of just getting to go right from game 1.

 

[ItWasJustified]

When Friedman and Seravelli are openly questioning the legitimacy of Stone's injury, you have to wonder if something is discussed this Summer. I doubt it though.

It's obvious that he could've played before the playoffs. Not a single doubt about that.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

POS franchise and POS player for going along with it

 

[ES]

The game roster was cap compliant with $80 648 317, thanks to Martinez being out.

 

[CanadienShark]

This is just comical.

 

[rsteen]

Doesn’t matter. I’m legit starting to question if his was even hurt in the first place.

Why would they fake an injury that is diagnosed via imaging? They would be caught as soon as the NHL started investigating and they couldn't produce a scan showing damage to his spleen.

If they were faking it he would just have said he had a recurrence of the back issues that kept him out last season. Patient says he's in too much pain to play hockey, no way of disproving that.

 

[WhataKnight]

The game roster was cap compliant with $80 648 317, thanks to Martinez being out.

This is why I say “Andy Lugerner, you saucy beast.”

Golden Knights perform salary cap ‘gymnastics’ with Andrew Lugerner | Golden Knights | Sports

Andrew Lugerner’s title is director of hockey legal affairs for the Golden Knights. But the 35-year-old is better known as the team’s “capologist.”

www.reviewjournal.com

 

[hangman005]

Why would they fake an injury that is diagnosed via imaging? They would be caught as soon as the NHL started investigating and they couldn't produce a scan showing damage to his spleen.

If they were faking it he would just have said he had a recurrence of the back issues that kept him out last season. Patient says he's in too much pain to play hockey, no way of disproving that.

Don't you bring logic into this, let people invent their own fantasies so they can hate Vegas

 

[Spawn]

The game roster was cap compliant with $80 648 317, thanks to Martinez being out.

There’s no such thing as being cap compliant in the playoffs.

The cheating occurred in the regular season. Just like it did last year.

And beyond that, even if cap did apply in the playoffs, who cares about game roster? That’s irrelevant. A players salary counts against the cap regardless of if they are dressed or not.

 

[CincoHolio]

Because literally every NHL team has several players that could be deemed "healthy" or "unhealthy" at any given time, given the injuries and pain they typically play through.

Of course they'll choose to play when the games matter more. Every single player would lean this direction. Patrice Bergeron played in the playoffs with a punctured lung. Would you have told him he had to sit?

Again, this is not some mysterious advantage Vegas has. Every team does this. With Florida, Ekblad missed a bunch of games to end the season. He's back G1. Because it's the playoffs. Same with Jarnkrok and Toronto.


Yes, it is hard to believe a lacerated spleen is a legit injury, because that's pretty uncommon. But unless you can prove it's fake, what are you trying to claim here?


So a player is fine to pretend to be healthy/unhealthy, as long as it doesn't meet a certain threshold of "cap circumstances"?

But I thought it was about the health of the player? So now it's not?

Jarnkrok went on LTIR a week after the trade deadline. Not the same circumstances.

 

[tfwnogf]

if vegas wins again maybe the league will do something about it and change the rules

....go vegas

 

[BB88]

This is an incredibly stupid standard.

Every team has like 5+ guys who are playing through something in the playoffs that they otherwise wouldn't in the regular season. Your standard is that either they should be forced to return early in the regular season, or that they should be forced to sit in the playoffs.

Say goodbye to half of every team's roster.


This is dumb.

VAN did this in 2011. A *gasp* Canadian team! Edler was injured at a "convenient" time to reactivate Salo from the LTIR when they were over the cap, and Edler miraculously returns for the playoffs. They go on to the Final.

There have been TWO CBA negotiations since then, and nothing has changed. CHI and TB both famously used this mechanism to win Cups.

It's in the CBA because players and the league want it. It's not a "loophole". It's by design.

If you're going to make some claims against it, at least be informed first and not talking BS.

When the only reason to have a player on ltir is because he’s too expensive to play and not too injured to play it’s f….ng bs.
Not having Stone on LTIR doesn’t mean he has to be forced to play be better than that C’moon now. You can sit players at the end of the season without having to put them on ltir

By your stand why have cap? What’s the point of it then, let’s get rid of it

It’s not like we are talking of a one time thing with Vegas, it’s well knowingly saying FU to the league and other teams fans. They have no issues with bragging about it

 

[Toby91ca]

I'm no Vegas fan, but the thing is, if he's not caught, is he cheating?

If he wasn’t actually hurt or was hurt but could have come back much sooner, then yeah, cheating whether caught or not. The hard question is whether he was too hurt to play or not and you can’t really confirm that ever, there’s only so much a doctor or trainer can do to assess, it comes down to the player

 

[BHD]

Of course the league is fine with it, it’s not against the rules. Anyone can do it. Vegas takes chances other teams won’t. It’ll bite them at some point, but good on them for always trying to win. I never understand the use of the word circumvent here, as it’s not against the rules.

This.

Besides, Vegas had to play the regular season WITHOUT him, and they still made the playoffs. But as you said, eventually they'll miss out on the playoffs after putting one of their big guns on the shelf.

 

[Weezeric]

This.

Besides, Vegas had to play the regular season WITHOUT him, and they still made the playoffs. But as you said, eventually they'll miss out on the playoffs after putting one of their big guns on the shelf.

The issue is not that they put him on the shelf, it’s that they instantly replaced him and now have all those players available. I love how the talking point two months ago was that this injury takes 3-6 months to recover from. What a joke!

 

[Panthaz89]

Why would they fake an injury that is diagnosed via imaging? They would be caught as soon as the NHL started investigating and they couldn't produce a scan showing damage to his spleen.

If they were faking it he would just have said he had a recurrence of the back issues that kept him out last season. Patient says he's in too much pain to play hockey, no way of disproving that.

Yeah bro the guys just conveniently always end up healthy for game 1 of the playoffs.........

 

[Fourier]

The game roster was cap compliant with $80 648 317, thanks to Martinez being out.

That's really not the point though. The issue is that Stone being on LTIR until day one allowed them the space at the deadline to add two impact players that are now on their roster. Had the expectation been that Stone would play before the end of the year they would not have been able to add both players without subtracting something significant from the roster.

Set aside the legitimacy of this specific injury. If a star on a contender misses games 10-30 in almost every case the only reasonable option is for the team to replace the player internally with one or more players that are substantially below the star in impact. In this situation that team not only has to deal with the in-season fallout from their missing star but they cannot accrue cap space for the deadline, and this definitely does not give them a stronger roster for the playoffs.

In contrast, if the same star is suddenly out from the deadline to the end of the season, that team can use the cap space to go out and find an impact replacement from outside their roster, and because of the unique timing might even be able to leverage the space into two impact players. So not only do they not have to deal with the drop off from a star to an internal replacement in the regular season but they could in theory get stronger even without the star. Then the player comes back for game 1 and you have a team that is significantly stronger than they would otherwise have been at the most consequential time of the year. This is what makes it so tempting for a team to abuse the LTIR rule.

 

[AzNightmare]

If he wasn’t actually hurt or was hurt but could have come back much sooner, then yeah, cheating whether caught or not. The hard question is whether he was too hurt to play or not and you can’t really confirm that ever, there’s only so much a doctor or trainer can do to assess, it comes down to the player

We all know the real answer to that. But it's also a known fact it cannot be proven, therefore cannot be enforced.

For all the old school macho-ness ingrained in hockey culture of being tough and battling adversary and showing character, it's kind of comical that teams become proud of being cowards when it comes to cap circumventing.

Awesome, you needed how much over the cap to win the cup??

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Vegas cheated the cap by parking Stone on LTIR until the regular season ended, then brought him off the roster for Game 1 and "loaded it all up" for a playoff run.

Also: in doing this, Vegas secured a 1st-round matchup against Dallas, the top seed in the West. And, if it wins that series, it gets a 2nd-round matchup against the winner of Winnipeg-Dallas, which is effectively a 2 vs. 4 matchup in the West. Because, as everyone knows, the easiest way to win the Cup is to ... [checks notes] ... be the 8-seed, be guaranteed not have home ice advantage at any point in the first 3 rounds, and set yourself up to play possibly the top-2 teams in the conference and then maybe the #3 team after that.

It's 58-dimensional quantum tetrahedral chess. And I'm not saying everything is 100% fine here. [Anyone wanting to drag up prior comments: note where I talked about responding to facts as they are presented and adjusting views as needed.] I'm saying if prioritizing having everyone for the playoffs was more important than playoff seeding, Vegas set itself up for the most difficult path it could in trying to repeat ... so either this will be a hell of a playoff run on the way to victory, or it will fail at some point. Which, seems like a pretty ass-backwards way to go about repeating as champions, but to each their own.

 

[dahrougem2]

Don't you bring logic into this, let people invent their own fantasies so they can hate Vegas

Find me any other professional sport where this level of "coincidence" has occurred three years in a row. This isn't just some fantasy. Even the insiders are questioning it.

Vegas cheated the cap by parking Stone on LTIR until the regular season ended, then brought him off the roster for Game 1 and "loaded it all up" for a playoff run.

Also: in doing this, Vegas secured a 1st-round matchup against Dallas, the top seed in the West. And, if it wins that series, it gets a 2nd-round matchup against the winner of Winnipeg-Dallas, which is effectively a 2 vs. 4 matchup in the West. Because, as everyone knows, the easiest way to win the Cup is to ... [checks notes] ... be the 8-seed, be guaranteed not have home ice advantage at any point in the first 3 rounds, and set yourself up to play possibly the top-2 teams in the conference and then maybe the #3 team after that.

It's 58-dimensional quantum tetrahedral chess. And I'm not saying everything is 100% fine here. [Anyone wanting to drag up prior comments: note where I talked about responding to facts as they are presented and adjusting views as needed.] I'm saying if prioritizing having everyone for the playoffs was more important than playoff seeding, Vegas set itself up for the most difficult path it could in trying to repeat ... so either this will be a hell of a playoff run on the way to victory, or it will fail at some point. Which, seems like a pretty ass-backwards way to go about repeating as champions, but to each their own.

Ok, but the counter argument to that is Vegas essentially "traded" Mark Stone for two months in order to secure a top pairing defensemen, top six center and middle six winger all with the guarantee Stone would return after two months.

If you told me the Avalanche could park Mikko Rantanen on LTIR for 2 months then load up with Hanifin, Hertl, and Mantha then casually welcome Rantanen back for game 1 I would tell you idgaf where we finish because our roster is the best roster.

 

[AslanRH]

If Vegas/Stone win this year, it may not get an ** and in 5 years most won't care, but it feels like it would be the least respected or at least most cynically evaluated cup win in ages by the hockey community

 

[LOFIN]

When Friedman and Seravelli are openly questioning the legitimacy of Stone's injury, you have to wonder if something is discussed this Summer. I doubt it though.

The problem is, there probably isn't a good solution to be worked out without modifying the CBA. And if that's the case, nothing will be done about it until the next round of negotiating begins.

 

[Thallis]

Yeah bro the guys just conveniently always end up healthy for game 1 of the playoffs.........

It's not convenient. It's the drugs.

 

[TLEH]

The problem is, there probably isn't a good solution to be worked out without modifying the CBA. And if that's the case, nothing will be done about it until the next round of negotiating begins.

Which I think is true, and one of the reasons nothing has been done about it yet. I think it will be a CBA thing. Its a player issue just as much as a cap issue.

 

[BHD]

The issue is not that they put him on the shelf...

Based on what everyone has said over the past couple seasons, that is the issue.

It was considered shrewd when the Hawks did it with Kane in 2015. Now, it's a travesty with the Knights and Stone.