This is exactly the point that needs to be made over and over. Set aside any allegations of cheating in this case. The rule creates a completely unintended opportunity for a huge competitive advantage available to few teams which in turn results in a significant potential for abuse. The real question is what does/can the league do to remedy this in the next CBA.
Well said, I agree the conversation should turn to solutions for the next CBA. I'm not sure it will be as simple as extending the salary cap into the post season.
I don't care whether it's fair. Other teams don't do this because they need their best players to make the playoffs or reach a better ranking. Vegas think they can afford doing this . good for them.
But it's sad for the fans who don't get to watch the best players. Especially those who buy tickets before the "injury" happens. This reminds me of the NBA trend of resting the best players every once in a while. It's bad for the league.
That is not what Vegas is doing; they are doing the exact opposite. They are replacing their injured star players with new healthy players in order to make the post season, and then using the previously injured star players
and their equally expensive replacements in the post season. I don't follow Vegas that closely, but I imagine it is unlikely that Vegas would have Tomas Hertl had Stone not gone on LTIR, and now that have both Hertl and Stone playing. In reality Vegas fans get to enjoy more stars, not less.
1. There is no possible way to make things so that it's an "even playing field in the post season." This is the same "argument" as to why we should have a salary cap that contemplates income taxes, which will purportedly "make things fair for everyone" but should only contemplate state income taxes and not local income taxes, or other taxes, or cost of living, or so on.
2. The rules can't change unless there's an amendment to the CBA. The CBA can't be amended unless both the NHL and NHLPA agree to the desired amendment, and as has been pointed out numerous times the NHLPA won't allow players to be forced to not play in the playoffs under a rule that they would have been perfectly able to play in Game 82 (and did so), or that endangers the safety of any player.
1. While it may not be possible to have a completely even playing field, rules are typically crafted in the spirit of fair competition. Fair competition is kind of the essence of "sport." I think I've expressed that this loophole creates an unintended advantage to a very small amount of teams each season that have also been having great post season success. We aren't seeing the same thing with tax advantages and any other incentives for players to play in certain cities. Players will always want to play in NYC and California despite the taxes. For me personally, I would take the Metro travel schedule over any tax breaks or beaches. Taking all incentives into account is rather impossible when you consider all of them, I am sure you agree we can't go looking at all incentives and their arguable impacts. But unlike all that nebulous stuff, the LTIR loophole is as clear cut an unintended, undeserved advantage as it can get, and it is entirely created by the current CBA.
2. The rules may not be changed today, but I think we can still argue that they should be changed down the road. As you point out, it isn't as straightforward a fix as it might seem, but there are solutions other than forbidding players to play. I think it starts with implementing rules so that teams don't end up in situations where they have to shelf healthy star players in order to ice a cap compliant roster. All teams deal with injuries, stars go down after the deadline all the time, and those teams deal with it, it is part of the game. Having a star go down with a long-term injury before the trade deadline should not be a godsend. I don't think it is under the purview of player safety to have everyone hoping their stars get injured in February.
The Canucks are the ONLY franchise penalized with the cap recapture penalty, and Florida is the ONLY beneficiary.
The Canucks benefitted for the years they had Luongo at a lower cap hit than it should have been. They saved about $1.5M in AAV in cap each season, which is about $2M in todays cap dollars. That is why they were punished (I don't agree with the punishment personally.)
Stone was injured in the conference finals against Montreal in 2021 when he had 0 points in 6 games. He was limping after game 1 last year. He played with a broken wrist in the Finals.
It’s funny that people think if a guy plays in the playoffs it means he made a recovery and still isn’t hurt.
Loads of players play hurt in the post season, but it seems only Stone has the privilege of playing with his LTIR scab every April lol.
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