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

[Cogburn]

The fact that people want to complain about Vancouver allegedly getting screwed and allege it was some league conspiracy to only target Vancouver, while going to beyond imaginable lengths to excuse everyone else who also tried to cheat but backed into / semi-invented an excuse and got away with no cap penalty at all is ..... no, nothing surprises me any more.

Alright...well that doesn't change anything. More teams got screwed over (potentially) by alleged cap circumvention. That's stronger precident to alter LTIR policy, and even in the joking rest of my post (concerning retroactively punishing legal means) all the more appropriate.

 

[Vegas07]

Weird not to mention the team with the best record in the West.

Oh of course they belong on the list. Thought I had them on there. Surprised they weren’t on his list either.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

HFBoards, in 3 posts [emphasis in the final post is mine]:

Vancouver gor slammed retroactively for following league rules and restrictions.

The fact that people want to complain about Vancouver allegedly getting screwed and allege it was some league conspiracy to only target Vancouver, while going to beyond imaginable lengths to excuse everyone else who also tried to cheat but backed into / semi-invented an excuse and got away with no cap penalty at all is ..... no, nothing surprises me any more.

Alright...well that doesn't change anything. More teams got screwed over (potentially) by alleged cap circumvention. That's stronger precident to alter LTIR policy, and even in the joking rest of my post (concerning retroactively punishing legal means) all the more appropriate.

 

[tantalum]

In the end many teams could be icing "over the cap" teams in the playoffs.

I can't wait for the changes to be made where they bring in some threshold (cap or cap+%) and all of sudden deadline time has a complete lack of activity. Make no mistake, there is a calculation in this done by the league that has "deadline excitement" far outweighing the number of people upset about supposed circumvention.

 

[Crabapple]

Don't blame Vegas for taking advantage of the rule, I blame the NHL for not fixing the rule.

 

[PaulD]

How many 8 seeds have won a cup though? Winnipeg was an 8th seed as well, and their performance was more typical of an 8 seed.

When a team has dealt with lots of injuries during the season, the last thing that team needs is to play a top seed in the first round. Even if Vegas is fortunate enough to win it’s likely to be a long, tough series.

Even Florida, one of the most successful lower seeds ever was really banged up when they were in the Finals.

Yes but I said contenders ....

not Cup winners

cheers

 

[WhataKnight]

In the end many teams could be icing "over the cap" teams in the playoffs.

I can't wait for the changes to be made where they bring in some threshold (cap or cap+%) and all of sudden deadline time has a complete lack of activity. Make no mistake, there is a calculation in this done by the league that has "deadline excitement" far outweighing the number of people upset about supposed circumvention.

This is where I’m at. If more teams get on board, everything from the deadline to the playoffs gets a huge bump. Who doesn’t like a good Clash of Titans?

Don't blame Vegas for taking advantage of the rule, I blame the NHL for not fixing the rule.

I blame the NHL for not doing anything about it when the army of lawyers necessary for confirming/ratifying(?) a CBA saw this coming - which they had to - and likely had to disclose the existence of such an instrument hidden in the broad daylight of that agreement.

It just took someone with the balls to do it….Wirtz was the first one really noticeably successful at it, followed by Vinik, and then Foley. Due to the fact that I can’t see any possible way that this wasn’t pointed out in those negotiations 11 years ago and it by no means guarantees a Cup win or the health to make the depth in a Godzilla Roster work (eg: Eichel’s first partial season in Vegas), I have a hot take:

Blame the other owners more for the combo of blowing smoke rings up a fan base’s wow-holes and managing a rebuild so shabbily. If a few owners decide that they can reach the cookies on the top shelf easier by climbing on some furniture rather than waiting for puberty, the “physics” of that space were made clear by the end of the last lockout. I’m not going to play human shield for a bunch of billionaires just because 6 of them know what 4D chess is and a dozen and a half are still at the “bang rocks together” stage of fire implementation.

There’s a greater-than-zero % chance Chicago knew they were crossing the Rubicon 2 years after the lockout, and a greater than 99% chance Tampa Bay did. I can’t take it seriously when someone says they don’t think every owner was aware of this maneuver before the last lockout ended.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I blame the NHL for not doing anything about it when the army of lawyers necessary for confirming/ratifying(?) a CBA saw this coming - which they had to - and likely had to disclose the existence of such an instrument hidden in the broad daylight of that agreement.

I can tell you from having seen pretty obvious stuff in the CBA that should have been fixed, that still isn't fixed, that army of lawyers isn't going through and thinking of all possible scenarios. Nor should they necessarily have to be doing that. Their foci are "does this pass the legalese test if we have to go argue it" and "does this not hurt the owners" and "if this could hurt the owners, how do we fix that."

Teams utilizing the cap via LTIR come playoff time? That's not a "benefits the players at the direct expense of the teams" thing so they never would have looked at it.

Guys who can still sign long contracts at older ages that are otherwise legal, who can then bail out on the final few years and the team can skip the cap hit? Still perfectly legal, completely foreseeable [and if anything I'm shocked no one has tested that yet], and either no one thought about it or someone thought about it and no one thought "yeah, that could happen ... let's guard against that." But goddamn it, we stopped 22-year old Quinn Hughes from signing a 10-year contract to age 32 when he's probably still going to be playing. That was the real problem right there.

There’s a greater-than-zero % chance Chicago knew they were crossing the Rubicon 2 years after the lockout, and a greater than 99% chance Tampa Bay did. I can’t take it seriously when someone says they don’t think every owner was aware of this maneuver before the last lockout ended.

I don't think Chicago could have possibly known in 2013 that 2 years later, Kane was going to have a broken collarbone in late February and land on LTIR. ust like I don't think Tampa possibly knew in 2013 that Nikita Kucherov, who was only just starting his playing career in North America, was going to break out and be a 2-time (soon to be 3-time) 40-goal, 4-time 100-point guy and was going to have to have hip surgery in late 2020 that was going to put him out for all of a shortened 2021 season.

I do think Chicago long before 2013 knew Hossa wasn't going to be playing after 2017, and the cap re-cap capture re-cap-recapture capture deferred cap penalties imposed changed the original plan on how that was going to happen, but Kane in 2015 and Kucherov in 2021 were much more unexpected opportunities - and even with Kane, he came back ahead of schedule and ahead of everyone's expectations and the angst over him was much more in hindsight than real-time - than they were some brilliant vision by anyone as to what would happen 3, 5, 7, 8 or more years out.

 

[WhataKnight]

I can tell you from having seen pretty obvious stuff in the CBA that should have been fixed, that still isn't fixed, that army of lawyers isn't going through and thinking of all possible scenarios. Nor should they necessarily have to be doing that. Their foci are "does this pass the legalese test if we have to go argue it" and "does this not hurt the owners" and "if this could hurt the owners, how do we fix that."

Teams utilizing the cap via LTIR come playoff time? That's not a "benefits the players at the direct expense of the teams" thing so they never would have looked at it.

Guys who can still sign long contracts at older ages that are otherwise legal, who can then bail out on the final few years and the team can skip the cap hit? Still perfectly legal, completely foreseeable [and if anything I'm shocked no one has tested that yet], and either no one thought about it or someone thought about it and no one thought "yeah, that could happen ... let's guard against that." But goddamn it, we stopped 22-year old Quinn Hughes from signing a 10-year contract to age 32 when he's probably still going to be playing. That was the real problem right there.


I don't think Chicago could have possibly known in 2013 that 2 years later, Kane was going to have a broken collarbone in late February and land on LTIR. ust like I don't think Tampa possibly knew in 2013 that Nikita Kucherov, who was only just starting his playing career in North America, was going to break out and be a 2-time (soon to be 3-time) 40-goal, 4-time 100-point guy and was going to have to have hip surgery in late 2020 that was going to put him out for all of a shortened 2021 season.

I do think Chicago long before 2013 knew Hossa wasn't going to be playing after 2017, and the cap re-cap capture re-cap-recapture capture deferred cap penalties imposed changed the original plan on how that was going to happen, but Kane in 2015 and Kucherov in 2021 were much more unexpected opportunities - and even with Kane, he came back ahead of schedule and ahead of everyone's expectations and the angst over him was much more in hindsight than real-time - than they were some brilliant vision by anyone as to what would happen 3, 5, 7, 8 or more years out.

I should clarify - I don’t think Chicago knew in 2013 they’d be utilizing this two years later. However, I honestly can’t see how legal counsel would miss the existence of such a glaring hack prior to the CBA being ratified - and when the opportunity arose in 2015, their in-house legal came back saying nothing was explicitly prohibiting it, and “away she goes.”

It seems more obvious to us in hindsight, but it’s just hard for me to envision how not one NHL club (one that doesn’t spend near the cap) wouldn’t see this coming in 2012’s negotiations and bring it up out of apprehension that teams willing to throw more cash around would abuse it.

(Also, as a sidenote, I feel like Kane slipped under the radar to an extent, while Kucherov was a tad louder - unexpected at first, but around that TDL, posters in here were already predicting. Fertile territory for people to assume that legit injuries on the VGK side were cause to connect dots and speculate that Eichel and Stone were gaming the system despite surgeries performed. Vegas is absolutely taking advantage, but I don’t quite buy the narratives of fake injuries or over-planned absences. The most I’ll bend there is admitting that 50 games into a season is both a logical and convenient time for injury prone players to show their dents.)

 

[Voight]

FYI, from The Athletic....

The league also monitors and polices every player’s LTI status after the trade deadline, a league source told The Athletic, consulting with team doctors, accessing medical records, mandating physical exams and relying on the advice of independent third-party doctors.
The league is confident that Stone’s injury is legitimate and long-term.

“This is very, very heavily scrutinized by the league,” McCrimmon said. “We’ve done it the last two years so we know exactly what that process looks like. Mark’s back surgery wasn’t routine if there is such a thing as routine back surgery. He had an apparatus attached to his spine and everything else, and it was a little bit unsure what his future might be.

 

[Voight]

It's amazing some fans can't grasp that all of this - what Toronto is doing, what Vegas is doing, what other teams have done to shirk contracts of players no longer playing on other teams - is completely legal under the salary cap, yet here we are on page 55 of this thread.

It's also something all 32 franchises can do. Full stop.

Tampa for example has had Seabrook on LTIR for the last couple seasons.

 

[pantherbot]

It's also something all 32 franchises can do. Full stop.

Tampa for example has had Seabrook on LTIR for the last couple seasons.

What Vegas is doing is only something all the other teams can do if a player gets injured at the right time during a season. I think that's the main issue here, not even that Vegas or Tampa exploited the loophole. There's an inherent luck factor to all this that just doesn't make logical sense. Why should teams essentially be rewarded for having a star player injured at a certain time during the season?

People are pissed because they think Vegas is cheating. Other people like you are defending Vegas by saying they are just following rules that other teams can use. The real problem is some random factor that should actually be a negative (injury to a player) turns into a competitive advantage.

Hence my suggestion to just remove the cap at the trade deadline. It evens the playing field for all teams. They can all load up and there's no advantage to some random injury luck anymore.

 

[Nemec]

Devils got blamed for cap circumvention when they were just following the trend in the league... Somehow this blatant circumvention situation is different?

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Devils got blamed for cap circumvention when they were just following the trend in the league... Somehow this blatant circumvention situation is different?

The Devils got blamed for blatant cap circumvention. If they'd merely engaged in blatant cap circumvention, it would have been OK.

 

[Nemec]

The Devils got blamed for blatant cap circumvention. If they'd merely engaged in blatant cap circumvention, it would have been OK.

Seems like splitting hairs to me...

 

[Martin Skoula]

FYI, from The Athletic....

How are we 57 pages in and still pretending like anyone has said that Stone wasn’t actually injured?

 

[Strangle]

Lol the real world. Every other league has adopted it. This league is a joke in comparison to other professional leagues. However, the league has expanded and grown. 2004 was 20 years ago. Are you saying your opinion on Anything hasn't changed in 20 years?

The league is small time, the money is small time and the management is Mickey Mouse as f***

The only league I can think of where the salary cap determines what we think about a player

Where ever ‘comparison’ poll values AAV over actual ability

Where fans rationalize “well, he’s miles better but he makes $2m more AAV. So I’ll pass on the 90 points and rather have the 70 points”

It’s so f***ing stupid

 

[Strangle]

You can say what you want about the legitimacy of Stone's untimely injury history and sudden reappearance for the first meaningful games, but I think the general public has made clear that, regardless of whether it's actually against the rules, it's certainly at least against the spirit of competition in the eyes of many. Nobody in the Vegas fanbase is going to convince people otherwise, regardless of how in depth you go into the medical details. The optics are just that bad.

I don’t care what Vegas or Tampa does, I just want the leafs to do it with Tavares next year

It's also something all 32 franchises can do. Full stop.

Tampa for example has had Seabrook on LTIR for the last couple seasons.

Did seabrook play in the playoffs? I honestly can’t remember

 

[NoelVilla]

Not sure. They got beat by Calgary Wranglers + Kadri and Rasmus Andersson.

 

[Grifter3511]

What Vegas is doing is only something all the other teams can do if a player gets injured at the right time during a season. I think that's the main issue here, not even that Vegas or Tampa exploited the loophole. There's an inherent luck factor to all this that just doesn't make logical sense. Why should teams essentially be rewarded for having a star player injured at a certain time during the season?

People are pissed because they think Vegas is cheating. Other people like you are defending Vegas by saying they are just following rules that other teams can use. The real problem is some random factor that should actually be a negative (injury to a player) turns into a competitive advantage.

Hence my suggestion to just remove the cap at the trade deadline. It evens the playing field for all teams. They can all load up and there's no advantage to some random injury luck anymore.

In addition to the 'luck' of getting injured at the right time, you need the 'luck' of the player's return aligning with the start of the playoffs, and in Vegas' case, the 'luck' of the same player getting injured at more or less the same time for the (potentially) same length of time three years in a row.....That's quite a hot streak.

 

[Strangle]

In addition to the 'luck' of getting injured at the right time, you need the 'luck' of the player's return aligning with the start of the playoffs, and in Vegas' case, the 'luck' of the same player getting injured at more or less the same time for the (potentially) same length of time three years in a row.....That's quite a hot streak.

What happens if Stone returns for game 82?

It would never happen in a million years, but if a doctor can clear him for game 1 of the playoffs, why can’t he be cleared for game 82?

And if he can play, what’s the penalty for a team being over the salary cap? It’s never happened and I don’t think the league would ever allow it to happen

But theoretically, what would happen if stone says “I’m ready to go coach, I want to get 2-3 games in before the playoffs and try out my new teammates!”

 

[WhataKnight]

Devils got blamed for cap circumvention when they were just following the trend in the league... Somehow this blatant circumvention situation is different?

The league does diligence on confirming injuries; we know there were rumblings about Bettman & the league having to confirm the injured statuses reported. They never called official shenanigans.

The Kovy shenanigans were regarding the front-loading; by paying $505K on the last five or six seasons, the total sum of the contract was enough to please Kovy, but the end left room for an easy-to-dismiss cap hit, as if an out-clause for letting Kovy walk without handcuffing the team owning the contract.

Both are circumventions, but Vegas can prove their injuries. Jersey can’t prove that the end of that deal wasn’t structured as a “dead man’s trigger”, so to speak.

 

[Nemec]

The league does diligence on confirming injuries; we know there were rumblings about Bettman & the league having to confirm the injured statuses reported. They never called official shenanigans.

The Kovy shenanigans were regarding the front-loading; by paying $505K on the last five or six seasons, the total sum of the contract was enough to please Kovy, but the end left room for an easy-to-dismiss cap hit, as if an out-clause for letting Kovy walk without handcuffing the team owning the contract.

Both are circumventions, but Vegas can prove their injuries. Jersey can’t prove that the end of that deal wasn’t structured as a “dead man’s trigger”, so to speak.

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but not all injuries can be proven. MRI doesn't pick up all injuries. If a player wants to take an extra 10 games off to come off the IR in the playoffs rather than the end of the regular season, who is to say that is based on actual injury or not? Can you or I determine if the player is truly still in pain, to warrant that extra 10 games off? No.

 

[Nemec]

What happens if Stone returns for game 82?

It would never happen in a million years, but if a doctor can clear him for game 1 of the playoffs, why can’t he be cleared for game 82?

And if he can play, what’s the penalty for a team being over the salary cap? It’s never happened and I don’t think the league would ever allow it to happen

But theoretically, what would happen if stone says “I’m ready to go coach, I want to get 2-3 games in before the playoffs and try out my new teammates!”

This is exactly the issue.. It is usually 5 days or so between game 82 and game 1 of the playoffs. I am sure those 5 days make no difference ultimately, in most cases.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Everything in this post is wrong, but this takes the cake:

The only league I can think of where the salary cap determines what we think about a player

Tell me you've paid no attention to the NFL without telling me you've paid no attention to the NFL.