PuckToons: An Extreme Approach to Salary Cap Management

Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity.

With NHL training camps opening up in little more than a week, a few teams are still looking to shed salary to get under the $56.7 million cap. A week ago, Dan Wood of the OC Register Duck's Blog posted a list of overcommitted teams, which includes the Anaheim Ducks, the Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks and Washington Capitals. "The amounts in question range from a few hundred thousand dollars to as much as $4.5 million."

Now I'm not really an expert on the CBA and the salary cap, which is entering its fourth season in the league (don't turn to your cartoonist for technicalities), but I do know there is a Long-Term Injury allowance that lets teams temporarily outspend the salary cap while a player is unable to dress.

While I fully expect that the teams in question this summer will fix their salary issues through traditional means (trades and expensive demotions), I do wonder what the future has in store for spend-happy general managers. Will they ever get to the point where a budget-dictated surgery becomes a cap-cheating strategy? It's unlikely, I suppose, but if it ever does happen, I hope they'll now cut me in on the cap savings.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-11-2008 @ 2:17PM

mepex said...

This is a tricky part of the CBA. One thing to note is the team must be compliant with the cap BEFORE the player is injured. So in the case of the teams you mentioned, including your Ducks, the LTIR exemption would not provide any relief.

What the LTIR exemption does is allow the team to go over the cap to REPLACE a player that is injured long-term. If Schneider got injured tomorrow, the Ducks could go over the cap up to his salary amount (assuming the Ducks are exactly at the cap), but it never lowers the salary cap figure.

Sorry- PuckToon busted.

9-11-2008 @ 2:19PM

Earl Sleek said...

Thanks for the correction, Mepex.

This won't be the last inaccuracy in the PuckToon series, though. I'm pretty sure of that.

9-11-2008 @ 5:26PM

Frisby said...

I don't know, Sleek, I think you may be on to something. Look at illustration#4 on page 229 of the CBA.

9-11-2008 @ 5:36PM

Just so nobody has to go really open their CBA pdfs, here's Frisby's passage:

"Illustration #4:

The Upper Limit in a League Year is $40.0 million. A Player who has an SPC with an Averaged Amount of $2.0 million becomes unfit to play on the last day of Training Camp, and on the same day, his Club exercises the Bona-Fide Long-Term Injury/Illness Exception on such Player. On Opening Day, the Club has an Averaged Club Salary of $41.5 million (excluding Earnable Performance Bonuses up to the full amount of the Performance Bonus Cushion). The Club is deemed to have already fully replaced the unfit-to-play Player with any Player or Players on the Opening Day Roster. If these replacements are maintained through the conclusion of the season, the Club's Averaged Club Salary is $41.5 million, as the Club is permitted to exceed the Upper Limit by $1.5 million because of the Bona-Fide Long-Term Injury/Illness Exception."

9-11-2008 @ 6:37PM

This does appear to be a bit of a loophole, but there are two things that must happen:

1. It has to happen before opening day.
2. The team can't replace that player with others.

Awesome: PuckToon back on!

9-11-2008 @ 7:42PM

Sorry about that, my pdf reader wouldn't let me cut and paste the text and my local video game store only had one copy of NHL09 left. I decided that it was more important to rush to said store than spend time retyping said passage. But since I found that for you, can you cut me in on some of your cut?

9-11-2008 @ 7:46PM

Normally I would cut you in, Frisby, but I'm bitter.

When I went to my local video game store yesterday, they had zero copies of NHL 09 left.

It's not terrible, since I'll be out of town all weekend anyway, but it's still enough to hold a stupid grudge :)

9-12-2008 @ 12:04PM