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

[WhataKnight]

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.

I won’t disagree or fly in the face of anything you said. However, whatever Vegas’ doctors are reporting, the league decided to accept it last year and this one, so far.

Several Knights being injured is plausible, but not as unavoidable as Kovy’s eventual retirement.

 

[Voight]

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.

Why shouldn't they have the option to replaced said player? Besides, Vegas still had to give up assets for Barbashev, Hanafin and Hertl.

 

[Voight]

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

There isn't anything to "fix" ...... teams cannot control when their players get injured, it just so happens that Stone was hurt shortly before the deadline the last two years.

What if Stone tore his ACL ind December and was out for the season? Does that make it slightly better for the people complaining or?

 

[Jersey Fresh]

There isn't anything to "fix" ...... teams cannot control when their players get injured, it just so happens that Stone was hurt shortly before the deadline the last two years.

What if Stone tore his ACL ind December and was out for the season? Does that make it slightly better for the people complaining or?

Players get injured all season to varying degrees/time missed and there’s no expectation you get a special dispensation for it. “Next man up” and all that. So why is that different in LTIR/playoff situations? The fact that this a such a specific slice of time (injured long term before the playoffs, but returning for them) where teams gets a mulligan to me is stupid.

In this case, Vegas intends on getting their player back at some stage in the playoffs, so why are they getting relief above and beyond the injured player returning that they had to be cap compliant for?

 

[AlwaysSunnyInTampa]

There isn't anything to "fix" ...... teams cannot control when their players get injured, it just so happens that Stone was hurt shortly before the deadline the last two years.

What if Stone tore his ACL ind December and was out for the season? Does that make it slightly better for the people complaining or?

Maybe a little. Kucherov nursed a groin injury he sustained in the 5 OT marathon vs CBJ through the entire 2020 playoffs and it turns into a torn hip labrum he discovers right before Christmas. We literally had Tyler Johnson waived to be cap compliant. Kuch has surgery and literally everyone loses their f***ing minds that he has to miss the season. And we *STILL* have to hear about it. It was 1 time and meanwhile Stone is at his 3rd. Even I'm like "This is the gift that keeps on giving"

If Kucherov isn't gonna get the benefit of the doubt, Stone isn't either.

 

[Voight]

Players get injured all season to varying degrees/time missed and there’s no expectation you get a special dispensation for it. “Next man up” and all that. So why is that different in LTIR/playoff situations? The fact that this a such a specific slice of time (injured long term before the playoffs, but returning for them) where teams gets a mulligan to me is stupid.

In this case, Vegas intends on getting their player back at some stage in the playoffs, so why are they getting relief above and beyond the injured player returning that they had to be cap compliant for?

Because there's no guarantee they get their player back. What if the player has a setback in their recovery?

& many if not all players play through injuries in the playoffs. So maybe last year if Stone had been hurt in say October, he would've sat out for longer than he actually did. But he very well may have played through pain and come back earlier given the stakes.

 

[Nemec]

I won’t disagree or fly in the face of anything you said. However, whatever Vegas’ doctors are reporting, the league decided to accept it last year and this one, so far.

Several Knights being injured is plausible, but not as unavoidable as Kovy’s eventual retirement.

But injury timelines can be manipulated very easily. One cannot prove or disprove that a player is in pain. One person's meniscal tear may hurt for 30 days and another's may hurt for 300 days. Remove the subjectivity of LTIR and make it objective as far as salary cap allowances. Do not let teams manipulate the timeline to take advantage.

 

[Jersey Fresh]

Because there's no guarantee they get their player back. What if the player has a setback in their recovery?

& many if not all players play through injuries in the playoffs. So maybe last year if Stone had been hurt in say October, he would've sat out for longer than he actually did. But he very well may have played through pain and come back earlier given the stakes.

My point is, those are the breaks of injuries. If a player is injured all year but comes back healthy game #81, oh well, you lost a player that could have contributed to making the playoffs. Its stupid, to me, that the playoffs is some magical mile marker and after that the cap doesn’t matter.

 

[Nemec]

My point is, those are the breaks of injuries. If a player is injured all year but comes back healthy game #81, oh well, you lost a player that could have contributed to making the playoffs. Its stupid, to me, that the playoffs is some magical mile marker and after that the cap doesn’t matter.

Exactly... Why would a team voluntarily put a player back in at game 81 when they could be in salary cap trouble? Who will truly know if the player was supposed to be well by game 81 or game 1 of the playoffs? It is manipulation of the rules.

 

[Nemec]

I won’t disagree or fly in the face of anything you said. However, whatever Vegas’ doctors are reporting, the league decided to accept it last year and this one, so far.

Several Knights being injured is plausible, but not as unavoidable as Kovy’s eventual retirement.

Regarding your last point, you are arguing that teams should follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. That is another subjective belief. Where does the spirit of the law begin and end? Completely subjective.
By objective standards, the Devils did nothing wrong.

 

[mkatcherin00]

Honestly, the league should just go one way or the other. Just let it be and let teams do this. Would provide for a great trade deadline every year and stacked teams competing

Or, be cap compliant in playoffs. Players have to sit out or you ice your top 9 and no 4th line for you.

Or, if you are not healthy enough for game 82, you have to miss the first -14 playoff games

 

[Ted Hoffman]

By objective standards, the Devils did nothing wrong.

They didn't do anything wrong. They did the same thing other teams were doing, that the league gave the green light to. The league just decided it was finally going to draw the line and the Devils got caught [put] on the wrong side of it.

 

[WhataKnight]

Exactly... Why would a team voluntarily put a player back in at game 81 when they could be in salary cap trouble? Who will truly know if the player was supposed to be well by game 81 or game 1 of the playoffs? It is manipulation of the rules.

If the next CBA is built in a way that both prohibits it being overused while encouraging more owners behind these teams to put their money where their mouths are, I’m all for it.

Elliotte Friedman’s podcast had an interesting segment on it, in that it’s something that the owners and GMs didn’t want to specifically block. So long as that’s the case, I’m not against it - I think it adds to the entertainment value, a la Brian Burke challenging Kevin Lowe to a fight in a barn over the Penner OS.

Regarding your last point, you are arguing that teams should follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. That is another subjective belief. Where does the spirit of the law begin and end? Completely subjective.
By objective standards, the Devils did nothing wrong.

Objectively, I absolutely agree - the Devils did nothing wrong, and I think Lamoriello’s contract structure shouldn’t have incurred a penalty. But - I could see where the league would take more issue with the Kovy contract; say for instance, it becomes the norm to backdive deals for superstars to the point that it creates more long-duration contractual anomalies. Across a number of years, I can understand if the league wanted to cap the length of a contract in order to prevent a team from creating more Suter/Parise/Weber/Luongo “knots”.

While I don’t think NJ should have been dinged there, there’s a difference between a contract structured to do what Kovalchuk’s did and how Vegas is using LTIR - injuries are unplanned; the “escape valve” was written into Kovy’s deal.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

We're off topic from the Vegas situation, but I still think the proper solution for Kovalchuk's contract would have been along the lines of the following:

1. An immediate moratorium on all contracts extending beyond age 36 pending implementation of new rules re: max contract lengths and handling of existing ultra-long contracts that extended beyond a given age,

2. A 3-tiered approach for maximum contract lengths:
* Players under age 36 [at the time the contract goes into effect]: maximum of (36 - player's age at the time the contract goes into effect) or 3 years
* Players 37-39: 2 years
* Players 40 and above: 1 year

3. A rule clarifying that for any multiyear contract then in effect that extended beyond a player's 40th birthday:
* All cap savings accrued by the original signing team would have to be paid back by the end of the player's contract,
* Savings are taken as a charge against the cap, equal to [player's AAV less player's salary] for years where the player's salary was less than the contract's AAV until all cap savings are paid back,
* Any such cap charge could not be preempted by the player being on LTIR [i.e. it's dead cap space], and
* In the event of LTIR for a given season, no more than the minimum of [player's NHL salary, player's AAV] would be available for replacement regardless of the team holding the player's contract

And I would have given the Devils 7 days to decide if they wanted that to apply to the Kovalchuk contract, or withdraw the contract completely without penalty and negotiate a new contract under the rules in 2.

 

[pantherbot]

Why shouldn't they have the option to replaced said player? Besides, Vegas still had to give up assets for Barbashev, Hanafin and Hertl.

That's not what I'm saying. LTIR is there for teams to have the ability to replace injured players, that's not a problem. The problem is that if a player gets injured at a certain time in the season and can come back by the playoffs, that team is actually better off, but its completely random. You'll probably say, well that's sports, random things happen and some teams benefit, which is true. But in this case they are benefiting in an illogical way because injuries should be bad luck not good luck.

That is completely separate from the other stuff people are bringing up about how Vegas could potentially be exploiting the situation by managing when Stone returns from an injury (or what Tampa clearly did with Kucherov). Even aside from the potential exploitation by managing the injury timeline, its stupid that a random injury can actually benefit a team.

For example, the Panthers had bad injury timing this year. Ekblad got hurt literally the day after the trade deadline so they obviously couldn't replace him with a trade, that's $7.5M of cap they can't use. But his injury timeline is a few weeks, so potentially late-season or early-playoffs. If he instead got hurt just a few days earlier, they could've used that $7.5M at the trade deadline maybe for Guentzel or Hanifin.

So Vegas benefits from LTIR because Stone gets hurt before deadline and likely comes back by early playoffs (I'm not assuming there's anything faked here). Florida doesn't benefit at all, just because Ekblad got hurt one day after the deadline. That's just stupid.

 

[pantherbot]

Because there's no guarantee they get their player back. What if the player has a setback in their recovery?

& many if not all players play through injuries in the playoffs. So maybe last year if Stone had been hurt in say October, he would've sat out for longer than he actually did. But he very well may have played through pain and come back earlier given the stakes.

In spirit LTIR is meant to allow teams to replace a player lost to injury, not allow a team the chance to build an all-start team for the playoffs because they had someone get injured at a certain time during the season.

So what if a team can't get their player back? That's what happens with injuries, that makes sense, it's called bad luck. Right now the system is stupid because LTIR allows a team to make up for an injury plus they have the potential bonus of having a roster well-above the cap in the playoffs. That makes no logical sense.

I get the owners are going along with this etc. etc., but that doesn't mean the system makes a lot of sense from a competitive balance standpoing.

 

[Kalus]

I think it would require too much oversight from the league each day. need to recalculate everything daily and last minute change could be hard to do. that said, in the playoff, it would be easier to do

I think the league and teams have the resources to handle the math.

 

[WhataKnight]

In spirit LTIR is meant to allow teams to replace a player lost to injury, not allow a team the chance to build an all-start team for the playoffs because they had someone get injured at a certain time during the season.

So what if a team can't get their player back? That's what happens with injuries, that makes sense, it's called bad luck. Right now the system is stupid because LTIR allows a team to make up for an injury plus they have the potential bonus of having a roster well-above the cap in the playoffs. That makes no logical sense.

I get the owners are going along with this etc. etc., but that doesn't mean the system makes a lot of sense from a competitive balance standpoing.

Very rational take.

Hell, I’m all for something like a cap penalty based on the amount exceeded - beyond a certain point. I still think this should be an option- within reason.

This being new territory with more teams willing to use the hack, we’re in the Wild West. Hopefully the next CBA includes both empowerment to utilize it, and restriction of abuse.

Last year’s playoffs ended with a cap-compliant Knights team against a total Wagon in Florida. (One can say Stone was brought back for the playoffs; but there was a legit surgery.) The way I see it, if two overpowered-but-somewhat-restrained rosters meet in the Finals, it’s good for drama, therefore good for entertainment, therefore the spread of the sport’s popularity. Better to leave no asterisks, and leave all teams some room to arm up.

 

[pantherbot]

Very rational take.

Hell, I’m all for something like a cap penalty based on the amount exceeded - beyond a certain point. I still think this should be an option- within reason.

This being new territory with more teams willing to use the hack, we’re in the Wild West. Hopefully the next CBA includes both empowerment to utilize it, and restriction of abuse.

Last year’s playoffs ended with a cap-compliant Knights team against a total Wagon in Florida. (One can say Stone was brought back for the playoffs; but there was a legit surgery.) The way I see it, if two overpowered-but-somewhat-restrained rosters meet in the Finals, it’s good for drama, therefore good for entertainment, therefore the spread of the sport’s popularity. Better to leave no asterisks, and leave all teams some room to arm up.

Hence my suggestion to just remove the cap after the trade deadline. There's already no cap in the playoffs, so it's just moving the date up to the trade deadline. Sounds radical at first, but it's really not. Should get the least pushback from teams and players because it benefits both.

No complicated calculations required. No missed games or forcing players back by a certain time. Allows for more player movement. All teams can take advantage and it's an even playing field.

 

[WhataKnight]

Hence my suggestion to just remove the cap after the trade deadline. There's already no cap in the playoffs, so it's just moving the date up to the trade deadline. Sounds radical at first, but it's really not. Should get the least pushback from teams and players because it benefits both.

No complicated calculations required. No missed games or forcing players back by a certain time. Allows for more player movement. All teams can take advantage and it's an even playing field.

This is the most blunt & rational take I’ve seen from someone not supporting Vegas, Tampa or Chicago.

I seriously want more teams operating like this due to the fact that it injects some forced fluidity into franchises that operate stagnantly. It’s bold, it disrupts, and it entertains without reducing the integrity of the sport if the concept of confident teams arming up annually can be accepted as natural by owners, GMs, and fans.

(I can’t really want this solely for Vegas’ use if I’m screaming for other teams to get on board.)

 

[Czechboy]

Hence my suggestion to just remove the cap after the trade deadline.

I love you logic and it makes sense BUT it hurts the Canadian (maybe not Toronto) and Small Market teams. Eg. the NYR, LV, Florida/TB and Dallas would benefit a lot more (off the top of my head). The whole point of the cap was to make it even for Winnipeg to compete with the NYR's.

 

[Czechboy]

Occasionally I come into these talks and still see some arguments that drive me crazy.lol

FTR.. I'm all for it and wish my Oilers would do it. I don't think it's cheating or circumventing at all. I think it's smart. I'm on LV's side and wish my GM would be as smart. However... this whole we are victims stuff is a bit much.lol

'we were cap compliant in the finals'.. that's great... but there were 12 to 15 games BEFORE the finals. Where is the 'we were cap compliant for round 1', 'we were cap compliant for round 2' and 'we were cap compliant for round 3' arguments? If anyone was less cap compliant for the entirity of last years playoffs, please let me know. If anyone is less cap compliant for this years playoffs.. please let me know.

'we aren't making the playoffs', 'our future is in jeaopardy', 'we have no assets to acquire players before the TDL (in comes Mantha and Hertl)', 'we are in the final wildcard spot;... these arguments are so insincere. As if LV isn't a massive cup contender once all their players get into the lineup.

Vegas's only major obstacle is chemistry once all the players are together and healthy. I would kill to have Hertl, Martinez and Stone to be added to my lineup before the playoffs.

When I joined the thread I asked a few posters to quote me when LV doesn't acquire any new players at the TDL. They insisted that their are no assets and won't be able to acquire one good player. Cool story.

Same thing, please quote me when LV doesn't make the playoffs or doesn't have a much different looking lineup than the one that lost to Calgary on Thursday.

 

[Fourier]

Why shouldn't they have the option to replaced said player? Besides, Vegas still had to give up assets for Barbashev, Hanafin and Hertl.

But would the assets have been different had they required retention or even double retention to fit them in? For example, what would the cost of the Hertl deal have been if the Knights would have required retention. Would it even have been possible? Setting aside the question of circumvention. This was a massive advantage to the Knights.

 

[hangman005]

I love you logic and it makes sense BUT it hurts the Canadian (maybe not Toronto) and Small Market teams. Eg. the NYR, LV, Florida/TB and Dallas would benefit a lot more (off the top of my head). The whole point of the cap was to make it even for Winnipeg to compete with the NYR's.

I agree with that, one posible way to level it out would be just to raise the threshold post deadline by a set amount, $5Mil, $10 Mil. Wouldn't have to much comparatively speaking, but could create that extra competitive leeway.

 

[Voight]

But would the assets have been different had they required retention or even double retention to fit them in? For example, what would the cost of the Hertl deal have been if the Knights would have required retention. Would it even have been possible? Setting aside the question of circumvention. This was a massive advantage to the Knights.

They did require retention.

& you do realize, its only an "advantage" for this season right? Hertls contract goes another 5 years.