Shady cap circumvention in Toronto

[4petesake]

1 hour ago, gurn said:

Hard to fight, even in court, the rules you voted in favour of.

Unfortunately Aqua voted in favour of the penalty when he was part of the unanamous decision to accept the new cba.

Oh exactly, my point was more related to the JB bashing. When people blame him for every single thing that happens in Canuckland and you point out how silly it is, you instantly get called a nut-hugger.  C’est la vie!

[mll]

1 hour ago, 4petesake said:

Retroactive punishment for what was legal and relatively widespread should have been fought by ownership in court. The formula for the recapture penalty was changed in the most recent CBA and surprise, it had no benefit to the Canucks. Who did it help? Well Nashville for one. Can you imagine the Preds having over $24 million recapture in one season? Me neither, the NHL was never going to let that happen to one of their preferred American partners.

 

So far only Roberto Luongo has created such penalties with his retirement last year.

When Luongo hung up his pads, the Vancouver Canucks and Florida Panthers were each forced to deal with penalties against their salary cap, with the former suffering the bigger charge. The Canucks have a $3.033MM penalty through the 2021-22 season and unfortunately will not receive any relief from this rule change given Luongo’s cap hit was $5.33MM.

The biggest winner (if you can even call it that) out of this new change may be the Nashville Predators, who were in danger of a potential ~$24.6MM cap charge if Shea Weber had retired just before the 2025-26 season. That number will now not eclipse the $7.86MM cap hit he carries, though that means it would be spread out over several years as the entire penalty must still be paid eventually.

 

Previously this is what faced the team, calculated by Pierre Lebrun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The LA Kings have a recapture penalty on their books for Mike Richards.

 

Gillis himself admitted that they tried to circumvent the cap and expected Luongo to not play out his full contract and end up on LTIR.  The Canucks lost control by trading him.

 

Weber signed an offer sheet and Nashville matched.  They had already lost Suter to free agency.  They are being penalized for something that is not their doing + they didn’t even need the cap savings.  In the 4 years he was with them under that contract they had the cap space to fit his 14M salary as cap hit - they were operating well below the salary cap.

 

Teams were warned before CBA negotiations even started multiple times that there would be retroactive penalties yet still elected to file those contracts knowing the risks.  They were offered an out with compliance buyouts.  NYR bought out the recapture contract of Brad Richards, Buffalo the one of Ehrhoff.  Canucks didn’t. 

 

[wallstreetamigo]

Its shady to see all these impact players magically be ready to return for game 1 of the playoffs when there was no way their cap hits could have been fit in the regular season.

 

Its an epidemic of cap circumvention now. Its no different in spirit than contracts like Luongo's really.

 

A simple solution is to change the LTIR rules and keep the salary cap for the playoffs.