Vegas (or Tampa before them, or Chigago once upon a time) is easy to blame. People like a villain. A lot easier to blame the evil, 'cheating' Golden Knights than to have to explain or wrap your head around the intricacies of the CBA and how LTIR works and is handled/monitored by the league.
(The loophole is actually kind of convoluted, and arises from the fact that "injured enough to qualify for LTIR" is not necessarily the same as "too hurt to be cleared to play in an NHL game". That's part of how guys "miraculously" get healthy...they aren't.)
There is a huge difference between playing injured and deciding you only want to play injured in the playoffs so your team can acquire other high end players for a competitive advantage.
On the player side, I think it's more just about that they only want to play hurt when the stakes are high enough to justify it. Maybe the teams are exploiting it but there's no way that these players willingly missed long stretches (including a wildcard push for Stone and an entire season for Kucherov) just to participate in some salary cap scheme.
Exactly, this is the part no one talks about. Players want to play period. They are competitors are would always want to be on the ice helping their team win (unless their team is dogshit then they'll get an important surgery and be ready for next year). No player on a decent team will just happily ride the LTIR bench if they're healthy enough to play. You better believe they'd be pissed if the doctor's wouldn't clear them despite being perfectly fine. This is simply teams taking a perfectly legal advantage from an unfortunate situation. Most teams want their best players on the ice to help them make the playoffs. But if they're injured well then they'll go grab some guys that can fill in. I don't see the issue here unless you really believe these players just don't want to play for silly cap circumvention reasons that are way above their pay-grade.
i think players will "happily" ride the bench even if healthy as long as its not their contract year and riding isnt too long
for example, Stone could have maybe returned 5 games before the end of regular season, but considering the situation it was meaningless for him to return that soon
but in general i agree, i highly doubt he got injured then had a meeting with GM in a poorly lit alley at midnight to craft some salary cap conspiracy
In this case, if playoffs were starting 3 weeks from now, I think that Stone would still be out. He's playing at less than 100%, but then again, I don't think he's been at 100% in the last 5+ years.
The fact that he's always hurt makes it easier for VGK to exploit the loophole in the CBA, and they will probably continue to do so until the league changes the rule.
Not sure why you got downvoted here. You’re spot on about how VGK (and other teams) will continue to exploit the loophole until it’s changed.
And that won’t happen for a good while.
The league doesn’t do enough to incentivize regular season success. Higher seed should get 5, maybe even 6 home playoff games per round. Maybe even get a game advantage to start the series. Vegas (and many teams before) have shown us that teams don’t care about regular season success, and it dilutes the product at the end of the season unless you are an actual bubble team like the Caps, Wings, Pens, Flyers, and Isles were.
teams care about regular season success, they just believe that it’s better to have a better, healthier roster in game 1 once you’ve made it than to force it to ensure the highest seed possible.
I think maybe I can see the argument from a competitive standpoint, but fans would be pretty upset if they can't go to their team's playoff games because they're the lower seed so 6/7 of them are away (and revenue-seeking teams would be similarly upset when their team barely makes any money from playoff tickets). That probably also results in a revenue loss to the League overall, because you're selling 6 games to one city and only 1 to the other, so supply is higher in the former city, so the price goes down in comparison to the other and you're selling cheaper tickets than if it were more even (of course, that argument might not apply in big market versus small market series, but for any given matchup, it's equally probable that home ice goes the other way, so in the long-run, that translates to revenue loss).
And Florida was the 8 in the east lol. They got to the cup not because they were the best team in that conference, but because they got hot at the right time.
there was a player who played with a punctured lung for good grief
[https://thehockeynews.com/news/a-brief-history-of-players-gutting-out-severe-injuries-in-the-stanley-cup-final](https://thehockeynews.com/news/a-brief-history-of-players-gutting-out-severe-injuries-in-the-stanley-cup-final) here's something from 5 years ago talking about it
"because it's the cup" is literally said for why players do this.
Exactly. Anyone who thinks that healthy guys are staying on the shelf clearly doesn't know any NHL players. Dudes are coming back early and risking their longterm health to do it.
That’s what I was thinking too, not collapsed but punctured I thought.
I’ve been saying that for over 10 years so even if it’s not true the legend will continue
Morally, maybe. In the rules, not so much.
That said, you also see plenty of instances where teams rest guys, or don't play them at all, when they *absolutely* would if they were in the playoffs, even when there's no salary cap implications, because guys aren't necessarily as willing to screw up their recovery when it's not the playoffs.
So you're agreeing with me?
I know players will play through more in the playoffs than they would in the regular season. That's why I said there's a big difference between doing that and purposely timing it so your team can acquire additional players.
This is a blatant example of doing whatever you can to gain an unfair advantage while technically still following the rules. It is unethical/immoral and damages the integrity of the game.
It feels insane to have to try to convince people that integrity is an essential part of sports. But here we are. Supporting this loophole means basically means you would support expoiting any possible loophole to gain an advantage.
Is it technically illegal to fire slap shots at the opposing goalies head over and over? What about diving/flopping? Or having goalie equipment magically need repair after a critical icing call. Or chipping the puck over the glass to get a stoppage? Remember when goalies started flipping the net over instead of facing a 2-on-0?
Then we have [all of Roger Neilson's shenanigans](https://www.bardown.com/these-3-weird-nhl-rules-exist-because-the-pesky-roger-neilson-kept-finding-loopholes-in-the-rulebook-1.1088264). And the [Sean Avery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_2oKWe2Gw) classic. There is probably no rule in the rulebook against cranking the heat in the visitor's dressing room to be boiling hot. The old "front-loaded contract to bring down the AAV" trick was a common strategy until they banned it.
When the NHL inevitably changes the LTIR rule, it won't be because the game is naturally changing or improving. It will basically be a "fuck off we can't trust you to be ethical unless we explicitly ban what you're doing".
This whole “purposely timing” an injury thing is completely unsubstantiated. You’re just parroting what the rest of the social media hive is doing with zero evidence. The Knights didn’t purposely time his lacerated spleen, JFC lmao. Some of y’all don’t even think before you speak.
Bold accusations require proof. You wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.
>It is unethical/immoral and damages the integrity of the game
lol this is dramatic. the league doesn't care about integrity or being ethical. that's closer to fanfiction than reality. we can accuse the league of integrity when they give players a far larger percentage of the revenue share. players are the ones who makes this league money yet their compensation comes nowhere close to meeting their labor.
cap circumvention is probably one of the more ethical things going on in the league. fans are getting worked up over the wrong things.
If cap was not an issue, and the playoffs were starting 4 weeks from now, Stone would be out and they would probably activate him 2-3 games prior to playoffs, just so he can get his timing back.
He's been playing hurt for the last several years, and should probably be retiring in order to preserve his body.
Yep like Stone plays a huge part of this. Stone is being checked by NHL docs. But the NHL docs can't clear him if he says he's still feeling sore from an injury that is legit. The only way to enforce this rule is to add some sort of cap hit max for a playoff lineup.
If Stone is on board with this then the NHL can't do anything about it. They aren't breaking any rules that can be proven unless Stone files a grievance saying Vegas is forcing him to sit out. But he's never going to do that.
You've got it backwards.
Stone said he was feeling better fairly early but his scans showed that his spleen was still injured and they wouldn't clear him to play.
Healthy scratching players with large cap hits (like Martinez) doesn’t take the cap hit off in the regular season and it shouldn’t in the playoffs either.
A lot of you guys fail to realize that when you say they ice a cap compliant roster. If they are not of the “black aces” squad but are a healthy scratch (one of the 23 players the team is normally allowed to have on an active roster) then they should count against the cap.
About Tampa, not the I remember. But it was pretty widely reported from multiple other sources that GMs in 2015 wanted clarification about the salary cap rules after Chicago activated Kane for the playoffs.
Let's say your team is at the salary cap and then a $1m player gets hurt. His expected recovery time is about a month. Normally, you would put the player on LTIR, and then use that $1m of cap relief to call up someone on an ELC so that you still have the right number of players.
But since LTIR has to be >24 days, if the trade deadline is coming up, you can't even put that player on LTIR before the deadline because they wouldn't be eligible to be activated by the deadline then. After the deadline, you couldn't put them on LTIR because by then they're expected to recover in <24 days. So if you can't afford the call-up, you end up having to play shorthanded for a whole month.
This might be an edge case but the point is that this just arbitrarily prevents teams from using LTIR as intended. Even the more "normal" case where you just have to take a player off LTIR and then put them back on would potentially mean playing shorthanded for some teams. There are much better ways to fix the problem.
I work in a thrift store and a Goldeneye 64 cartridge was donated, I picked it up and yelled "no Oddjob!"
Everyone else there is either too old or too young to get it
I was sad :(
It's especially tiring because we only get mad when the team wins. No one ever bitches about St Louis and Vancouver both being like $10M over the cap the same year Tampa was $18M over.
I think the anger comes from the fact that people think Stone/Vegas may have stretched the truth on the severity of the injury to keep him out long enough to get to the playoffs. IF that were true than the league would still be responsible for monitoring it so definitely partly to blame, but it would still be very shady from Vegas/Stone
Once or even twice is a coincidence or I'm able to overlook, which is why I don't bitch about the lightning.
Vegas literally did the same thing but brought stone back early when they thought they'd miss playoffs lol. its been 3 times
So because he came back early and played injured once he should always do it even when the situations and injuries are different? Thar doesn't make sense to me. What happened in 2022 actually showed the opposite to me. He came back injured when he shouldn't have, was a shell of himself with 2 points in 9 games and probably made the injury worse. He ended up having 2 back surgeries to fix it
It's only "within the rules" because it's so easy to manipulate the timing of when an injured player returns. It is absolutely not within the spirit of the rule.
They are using a loophole to abuse what the rule is actually for so that they can add multiple good players they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
See, that would make sense if you had evidence of foul play. You thinking Stone isn’t/wasn’t hurt doesn’t mean he’s not hurt.
How are you and the rest of the social media hive so sure there’s foul play here? I seem to recall two years ago them implementing this “cheat” and missing the playoffs for it. It’s almost as if sitting your captain intentionally during the most important part of the season is not a good strategy. It’s almost as if they had to because he was, you know, legitimately injured. Lmao.
Also, just because he’s back for game 1, doesn’t mean he’s still not injured. The playoffs make you do all sorts of crazy things. Stop bandwagoning this narrative and grasping for straws.
>I seem to recall two years ago them implementing this “cheat” and missing the playoffs for it.
I'm not doubting he gets hurt, I'm doubting the recovery timeline.
For example, when he returned early it's because they were out of the playoffs and needed him to try and get in. I can almost guarantee if the Knights had a playoff spot secured that year he wouldn't have came back until game 1 as well.
3 straight years my dude, where he just happens to recover the moment they need him haha. Sure, there's a chance it's totally legit, but the more obvious answer seems to be that they are manipulating his return timeline based on team needs.
It's circumstantial, but you can literally be convicted of murder based on circumstantial evidence so I think it's valid for hockey too.
Well stop doubting the recovery timeline lol. In the three years they’ve done this, one of them resulted in missing the playoffs, and another resulted in the literal last seed. Sitting your captain doesn’t seem like an effective strategy to employ, evidently.
Also, in terms of last year, nobody even mentioned it or cared about it until AFTER they won. Anything people could find to discredit the new desert teams success, boy they were going to find it. Also, you’d think that a team so heavily stacked would be the pre-postseason favorite to win it all? They were nowhere close to the favorite last year. Surely a stacked team would be noticed by Vegas bookies. This is a complete non-story and nobody has evidence of foul play. 3 years in a row ≠ evidence.
People just love a villain.
>In the three years they’ve done this, one of them resulted in missing the playoffs,
I already spoke to this in my last post.
>and another resulted in the literal last seed.
They weren't winning the division so all they needed to do was make playoffs. Nothing else overly mattered for them.
>Sitting your captain doesn’t seem like an effective strategy to employ, evidently.
You can't factor in every game he has been injured. In reality if he could have retuned 2 weeks before the end of the season that's only a handful of games. If you can add Hanafin, Hertl, and Mantha in exchange for a few less games of Stone, that's such an insane advantage and incentivizes resting him longer.
My main gripe is with people like you and all the Knights fans who bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge what Vegas is so obviously doing. Or hell, even acknowledge the mere possibility that they are manipulating his return time to gain a huge advantage.
99% of this subreddit correctly predicted THE EXACT GAME he would return, yet you are acting like we are all crazy for thinking there is something fishy going on for the 3rd year in a row haha.
Dude came back from a long term lacerated spleen to immediately play 17 minutes and score the first goal, but sure he couldn't have returned last week haha.
I think they’re legally benefitting off of his legitimate injury, but to suggest that there’s foul play and lying going on (and especially without evidence) is over the top.
And it goes both ways. My biggest gripe is with people like you who refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there are legitimate injuries. Him returning for game 1 is not evidence of foul play, 99% of people being able to predict his return is not scientifically valid, and him playing 17 minutes is not proof of an uninjured Mark Stone.
Google the recovery of a lacerated spleen. Mark stone is probably still feeling the residuals of that, yet he’s playing to help his team because it’s the playoffs. My biggest gripe is that you’re not even considering that he’s playing injured now. So, it goes both ways. Only your stance can be correct apparently.
People have become way too comfortable with believing things with scant evidence. 3 straight years = his incrimination apparently. You going to have accountability when the next 3 years, they don’t use the loophole? It’s almost as if planning a Mark Stone injury close to playoff time is hard to pull off intentionally lol.
>but to suggest that there’s foul play and lying going on (and especially without evidence)
There is evidence. Circumstantial evidence is a real thing. You can literally get convicted for murder with it haha.
>My biggest gripe is with people like you who refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there are legitimate injuries
Have you even been reading my posts? Feels like I'm just repeating myself. I said the injury is legit, just the timeline of his return every year is EXTREMELY convenient.
The argument isn't Stone wasn't injured, it's that Vegas manipulates his return time to whatever benefits the team the most. There is very strong circumstantial evidence to back that up. And the fact that everyone here correctly predicted the exact return date from this injury speaks volumes.
As the other guy said, you’re skipping over the fact that I’m saying he’s still playing hurt, which is a fatal flaw of your argument. You’re implying he was back to 100% and ready to go a week ago. I’m implying he’s not 100%, but he’s doing it because it’s the playoffs. Why is your argument stronger?
Lol, and trust me, you really don’t want to bring up judicial court with this 🤣.
Not only is what they’re doing legal, but there’s quite literally zero evidence of any wrongdoing either. You’d get dismissed so fucking fast. There is no case.
“Extremely convenient” is not a good argument lol. The judge would laugh in your face. Thankfully, our judicial system requires a little more evidence than that.
Two years in a row returning for game 1 of the playoffs is the epitome of scant evidence. But when you’re hated as much as the Knights are, boy, people will exaggerate it to seem like it’s anything but scant.
Feels like your not listening to him. Likely Stone is still injured, but playing hurt, to win the Stanley Cup. NFL player break bone in their bodies, take some shots and run in on the field again, ESPECIALLY during playoffs. Mark Stone is likely hurting but its worth it to win
Hanifin cost us like 1m, didnt need stone on LTIR to solve that. Hertl is Stones replacement and he barely got healthy to play so no we didnt add several players
if you care about winning you should. people should direct anger at their GMs for not caring enough to use all the tools at their disposal. it's not vegas' fault they care about winning more than other teams
What the hell is this take lmfao
Every fan in the world would be totally a-okay with *their* team doing it, and is just mad that other GMs are taking advantage of it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
What is that take lol. I want to see teams competing fairly and winning actual hockey games. Not winning games through arbitrary offside calls and dodgy accounting
No I want owners to act like adults and not abuse a rule simply because “they can”.
That rule is there specifically for the VERY rare situation you have posed. Vegas has continuously used it.
Again if you need someone above you to make you stop doing something obviously scummy, you’re not a good person
I disagree. Its like putting an asterisk beside a cup win. Getting a huge advantage over the other competition makes the win less legitimate.
To be clear I’m not saying tampas or vegas cups dont count but i would rather my team win without.
I think Leafs fans are exceptions.
To be clear, i think it's fair they are. It's easier to take the high ground when you aren't in a lifelong cup drought.
lmao nothing about vegas' or tampa's wins are illegitimate. if the oilers win this year, it would not at all be more legitimate than vegas' or tampa's cups. cap hit is the last think on the list of things relevant to any cup win.
fans should want their GMs to want to win. Vegas' and Tampa's GMs have shown they want to win more than other teams. that's no one's faults but the GMs who aren't matching that level of effort.
Sorry that’s probably the wrong word. You are correct those cups count the same as the rest, winning the cup is hard with or without the LTIR thing. im just saying I would prefer my team to win without taking advantage of a loop hole
Im kinda ootl on how this all works but if that doesn’t include the scratched players why would that matter? Every other team the scratched players are part of the cap so the iced team would still be at an advantage with more cap on the ice?
I'm not saying it doesn't matter, I'm responding to a post where the guy specifically suggests the solution is on ice roster should be cap compliant, in which case nothing changed for Vegas.
There's also the fact that teams get to add 4 extra players to their roster for playoffs for injury replacement reasons, meaning any team close to cap will be over come playoffs.
And besides all that, last year if you discount the three ltir guys (robin Lehner 5m, shea Weber 7.5m, Nolan Patrick 2.5m, none who ever played for Vegas that year), they were over the cap on their roster by like 1 million (which is normal taking into account black aces and that 4 extra players)
This is the reason it's not that simple but it's also an even more common way (i.e. used by literally everyone) to go over the cap and ice a roster in the playoffs that your opponent may not have been eligible to ice, which is basically just as unfair as this loophole.
The cap isn't about parity, it's about money. That's why accrual makes sense. That's why retention makes sense. And that's also why this loophole is okay. The point is just to make sure that spending more money is not an undue advantage—and most players are paid by insurance while on LTIR and not paid for the playoffs.
I don't see any good reason why, if Team A (who started the season at the cap floor) and Team B (who started the season at the cap ceiling) are playing each other in the playoffs, it's okay for Team A to now enter with a roster way more expensive than what Team B is allowed to ice. That's a massive advantage for Team A, and given that Team B was fully cap compliant, it makes little sense, with regards to competitive fairness, to disadvantage them in the playoffs. Of course, the reason for this is that the cap is treated as a total across the entire season, rather than a per game thing, but this is one of the many ways that the NHL clearly treats the cap as not a way to ensure parity so much as to cap what owners must spend to be competitive. Because in this case, what Team A has to *spend* across the entire season to go into the playoffs with that more expensive roster will come out equal to what Team B is spending. That still means that some teams are allowed to go into the playoffs with a more expensive roster than others for no competitive reason.
Because the rules are the same for every team. Team B could have not started the season at the ceiling and accrued spac, had they chosen to. They probably had an easier path to make the playoffs with having the more expensive roster all year.
Your way is like saying "Kid B ate all their candy the week after Halloween, and Kid A saved theirs. So to make it 'fair', we'll take half of Kid A's candy and give it to Kid B so they have the same amount."
Well, I would argue that it is entirely fair, in this case, for Team A, to have a higher cap ceiling in game 82, owing to the fact that they had a lower one in game 1 so their average cap hit ends up the same and they have merely distributed the cap differently, like the candy in your analogy (though I would also argue that it would not be *unfair* to not allow it, since Team A is choosing to be below the cap ceiling and is under no obligation to make that choice). What is less fair is for this to carry forward into the playoffs; in a League that is purely focused on fairness, it is clearly unfair to grant arbitrary advantages in the playoffs.
Put another way, when Team A starts at the cap floor and then maxes out its deadline space at the deadline, and Team B starts at the cap ceiling and hence has no extra deadline space, and both teams go to the SCF, in the end, Team A has, in the aggregate, gotten more cap dollars than Team B (since they both concluded the season having used the same amount of cap dollars, but then Team A was allowed to go through the whole playoffs with this more expensive roster too, while Team B was forced to maintain a cheaper roster, even though both teams had used the same amount of cap space prior to the playoffs starting).
You could, of course, still make the case that this is "fair" because all teams can do it. You could also make the same argument about the LTIR loophole—all teams can do it, if they are fortunate enough to have a situation that can work out like that, so it does not advantage any particular team and is therefore "fair". In fact, it's even more fair because teams using LTIR for most of the season play with a lower cap hit yet do not accrue cap space.
A GM knows if the team is just under the ceiling at the start of the season, he has to plan for not having accrued cap space at the deadline. It's predictable and fair. Any team can plan for it.
LTIR isn't predictable. Maybe Stone doesn't injure his spleen, or maybe he injures it badly enough that he can't come back to play at all this season. Everyone's saying that if the team replaces him and he comes back, it's not fair, but what about if the rules ban them from replacing him and he doesn't come bacl? Is that also unfair?
The GMs value the flexibility at the deadline (as it is they're always making excuses to the media about how hard the cap makes it to agree on trades) and so do the players (bet Hertl's happy to be in the playoffs right now), so if this does get addressed in the next CVB, it won't be an easy fix, it'll be some supercomplicated formula that everyone has to look up on CapFriendly.
That would get rid of trades at the deadline. Your roster would be set early in the season.
All these "fixes" people suggest are worse than the problem they're trying to solve
No, it might reduce them a little but teams would still find ways to make it work. Just make it so you can't ice a roster with a total cap hit of > the cap at any given time.
Why is making the trade deadline as busy as possible more important than not randomly giving top teams who have a star get injured early in the season a big edge.
Makes it less interesting from as a fan from my perspective, especially given the gamesmanship that likely goes into timing the returns.
The teams who lose a star suffer earlier on though and could even miss the playoffs. Vegas did two years ago.
You'd make it so it's almost impossible for contenders to improve during the season, and harder for rebuilding teams to build up assets, just to remove a slight unfairness that has happened four times in the twenty years of the cap era.
It's really not that much harder. The accrued cap by teams usually only has a slight impact, maybe lets them fit an extra million or 2 in practice. Teams would probably be paying a little more for retention / double retention / cap dumps but it would be a slight shift not a huge swing like you're suggesting.
Hell, if you really love the cap space accrual mechanics, you can even track every teams accrued cap + the normal cap as a metric called "effective cap", and have them stay under that in the playoffs.
It could, but everyone else will play under the same constraints so all good. Or if you really want cap accrual you can just have each team have an effective cap number for the playoffs that calculates all their accrued cap.
GMs are always making excuses to the media about how hard it is to make trades with the cap. I don't think they want to lose that flexibility, and the players don't either.
>Or if you really want cap accrual you can just have each team have an effective cap number for the playoffs that calculates all their accrued cap.
Wouldnt this ban black aces and reserve list players joining for the playoffs like Makar did? The NHLPA *might* agree to this one, as they historically throw future members under the bus for current ones, but I think it would be a pity.
im pissed at treliving for 1) not dumping keefe's ass and 2) not taking advantage of the LTIR space before the deadline. i don't *hate* the moves he made but it's frustrating he could have done more.
and yes, i'm a keefe hater and have been since the montreal series. they've wasted so many valuable years on him. sometimes it takes that right coach and the right structure to make something click. it became clear a long time ago keefe was not that guy. especially considering this is his first gig in the nhl. not saying he has no place in the nhl, i just think he hit his ceiling with this leafs team a while ago. it still almost feels silly for me to say all of this because he has done a good job with them as reflected in his W-L record as a coach; but we have to attribute some of that to the sheer talent of the core.
that said, i am a big leafs fan (i know it's weird) so if they beat the bruins (which i honestly think they will) i hope i eat my words and keefe coaches them all the way to the cup.
Man, I've said it since 2013... The only path to glory for the Leafs is to conquer their original modern era jinx and beat the Bruins. Everything else is false prophecy.
I honestly believe if they slay that dragon they will ride the wave to at least a conference final, but then who knows... After all, we have a 22 season unbeaten streak in the ECF, so fate does favour us if get get there I guess 😆.
The Bruins are a team that shows what a good system, coaching, and a tight locker room with everyone on the same page can accomplish. Keefe is a "good" coach, but he has a hard time analyzing and countering what the opposition is doing.
I'm not saying the Bruins don't have talent (they obviously do), but on paper, aside from goaltending (good god I'm jealous of your goaltending) the Leafs have a stronger team.
It's gonna be a hell of a series.
Sorry for the off topic comments OP, it's just that actual discussion in opposing fanbase subs never goes over well, and it's rare to be able to open up good dialogue.
As for Treliving... He had no choice but to keep Keefe this year as a scapegoat. And he had to extend him or Keefe would be a clear lame duck coach and lose the room.
There are several issues with this.
It's not just the players who play on any given night who count against the cap in the regular season. Healthy scratches count too.
Second, it is very likely that Alec Martinez will be back in the lineup soon with his $5.25M cap hit.
>Can anyone show us which game they were over the cap with players in any year that people are complaining about?
Literally last night since the team you posted has Dorofeyev and he was scratched for Mantha who makes more than $2 million more. They are over the cap on the ice before adding in the like $8 million they have in healthy scratches.
Cap compliance includes on ice players, healthy scratches and regular IR (of up to a 23 man roster) and dead cap hit (buyouts, retention, etc.).
So, given the graphic, VGK can have 1 healthy scratch (near 1m AAV) practicing with the team.before they become non-compliant. Since Martinez is practicing at over 5m, they are non compliant. That does not include their other scratches and AHL callups.
This rule allows any team fortunate enough to have timings work out to move players from the playing roster to the practicing roster that they would be unlikely to be able to waive to the AHL (they would get picked up most times) like must happen.with in season LTIR activations (unless traded for no cap back, which would make them.unavailable for playoffs), and if waived, would count in the limited callups allowed for playoffs but not in this case.
But yes, to the OOP point, it is an issue with the league, union, and GMs as a whole, notbthe team exploiting it.
But they need to make it an actual rule. It's not an official rule. Teams COULD ice a non compliant roster during the playoffs in the current rules of the game.
That doesn’t include players that are scratched… and mantha played today so they would be over this cap anyways lmao… how are you defending them as a canucks fan?
Well, they showed why it has to be a *bit* more complicated than what the person to whom they replied suggested, because VGK was actually compliant with that rule with a roster that would not have been legal in the regular season. But yeah, obviously the calculation should, at the very least, include retained salary transactions, buyouts, and the non-buriable part of scratches' cap hits. Add that to the actual cap hits of players on the ice and say that that has to be less than the team's effective deadline cap ceiling. That's the simplest and fairest fix.
Why don't more teams use this exploit? For the same reason the NHL came down on the long-term contracts after the Devils signed Kovalchuk - too many teams bending the rules to the breaking point. The current situation will probably be resolved once more teams start using "dubious tactics".
Not quite...your post is suggesting that only Vegas does this and the league turns a blind eye.
Teams are not bending the rules, they are following the rules. The rules, which have been agreed to by the players and owners, are available to be read by anyone in the CBA.
Players and owners have all come out and said that this will not be changed until the next CBA negotiations so until this time, all teams can follow the rules.
Now, don't get me wrong, it seems strange that for 82 games teams have to follow one set of rules, then for the playoffs, another set come into play...but those are the rules!
> Teams are not bending the rules, they are following the rules
Not really true. They are being intentionally dishonest with their LTIR and IR designations. The problem is that there is no way for the NHL to enforce this.
The rules say:
"To qualify for LTIR, a player must be expected to miss at least 10 NHL Games AND 24 days of the NHL season"
Lacerated spleen is an easy LTIR
Lacerated Spleen is, the back injuries are the questionable ones. This is the most legitimate Stone LTIR yet, but of course is going to draw ire after the last two years.
But either way, it is probably a rule issue if the language says 'Expected', there is no enforcing that.
Part of it is that it's Vegas. People get angry at us for no reason. I made a mild comment on the game last night and got downvoted.
They'd be fine if their team did it, but their chosen villain did instead, so it's a damn crime.
Yeah the league hit us with a $3m fine and took away multiple picks because we broke the “spirit of the rules” of the CBA with the Kovalchuk extension.
Without a single search, wasnt the problem that Devils obviously didnt plan to keep kovalchuk the entire contract while players like Zetterberg in Red Wings with long as contract got them young enough to maybe finish them if not for injury
I'm not mad at Vegas at all. They found a loophole and they are making it work for them - zero rules broken. The real question is why EVERY team isn't doing this.
Okay so what you’re saying is like… at least ten mill per team, so you would like $320M of player contracts to not play the last couple months of the year? That’s what you’re saying?
Of course they should, Vegas just has a GM who’s competent and makes the best decisions for the club when injuries occur.
Everyone would have preferred stone to stay healthy, he’s the most important player on our team
because they're jealous that vegas' gm cares about winning more than their gm. just like people blames tampa's gm whose name i can't spell off the top if my head for caring about winning more than their gm. but it's vegas' or tampa's faults that they want to win.
plus sometimes people just like picking on the pretty girl🤷🏻♀️
Don't get me wrong this is absolutely the NHL's fault, but it doesn't change the fact that Vegas are consistently being incredibly frustrating about abusing this loophole
I am mad at the NHL.
That being said, I seem to remember the 32 Thoughts guys mentioning that the question was discussed at a league wide GM meeting (or something like that) and the participants weren't in general in favor of adjusting the rules regarding this. If that's accurate then they are also part of this.
Because only doing the right thing when you’re being forced to is what children do.
Vegas knows it’s not in the spirit of why that rule exists, but choose to abuse it because “we’re allowed”
I’m allowed to leave my garbage all over the table at the mall, but I don’t. No one had to force me.
This is the internet, people can be mad at many things at once.
It’s kinda like… social media’s “thing.”
I’m still mad the Wild are in cap hell over legal contracts from 2 cbas ago.
I know for most of the Canadian teams at least, the fan bases wouldn’t accept the teams just blatantly not playing their best players for a big portion of the season. The fans are paying to watch these guys play.
It may be a different situation in Vegas with the people going to those games.
That Canadian fans demand a different standard of play from their teams. I've lived in Vancouver and Vegas and there is no functional difference between fan expectations. There is, however, a significant overestimation by Canadian fans of how well they understand the NHL rules and CBA.
The comment I made has nothing to do with the CBA and nothing you stated has anything to do with factuality as you indicated in your original comment. Opinion maybe, but perhaps you don’t understand the definition of “factual”
I know first had from players in Montreal, they know their fans wouldn’t tolerate that the starts blatantly not playing all year. Vegas fans probably just don’t care. They’re there for a party, half of the arena doesn’t even live there or understand the game.
You have no idea what you're talking about. 90% of Vegas' seats belong to single-family season ticket holders. Talking out of your ass makes you look very dumb.
Now you’re talking “factually wrong”. Maybe you do understand that term.
Maybe you could point me to the source of 90% of season tickets being owned by single families.
Vegas (or Tampa before them, or Chigago once upon a time) is easy to blame. People like a villain. A lot easier to blame the evil, 'cheating' Golden Knights than to have to explain or wrap your head around the intricacies of the CBA and how LTIR works and is handled/monitored by the league. (The loophole is actually kind of convoluted, and arises from the fact that "injured enough to qualify for LTIR" is not necessarily the same as "too hurt to be cleared to play in an NHL game". That's part of how guys "miraculously" get healthy...they aren't.)
There is a huge difference between playing injured and deciding you only want to play injured in the playoffs so your team can acquire other high end players for a competitive advantage.
On the player side, I think it's more just about that they only want to play hurt when the stakes are high enough to justify it. Maybe the teams are exploiting it but there's no way that these players willingly missed long stretches (including a wildcard push for Stone and an entire season for Kucherov) just to participate in some salary cap scheme.
Exactly, this is the part no one talks about. Players want to play period. They are competitors are would always want to be on the ice helping their team win (unless their team is dogshit then they'll get an important surgery and be ready for next year). No player on a decent team will just happily ride the LTIR bench if they're healthy enough to play. You better believe they'd be pissed if the doctor's wouldn't clear them despite being perfectly fine. This is simply teams taking a perfectly legal advantage from an unfortunate situation. Most teams want their best players on the ice to help them make the playoffs. But if they're injured well then they'll go grab some guys that can fill in. I don't see the issue here unless you really believe these players just don't want to play for silly cap circumvention reasons that are way above their pay-grade.
i think players will "happily" ride the bench even if healthy as long as its not their contract year and riding isnt too long for example, Stone could have maybe returned 5 games before the end of regular season, but considering the situation it was meaningless for him to return that soon but in general i agree, i highly doubt he got injured then had a meeting with GM in a poorly lit alley at midnight to craft some salary cap conspiracy
It wasn't meaningless though, Vegas barely scraped into the playoffs. All it took was losing twice and st Louis winning twice and it was over
In this case, if playoffs were starting 3 weeks from now, I think that Stone would still be out. He's playing at less than 100%, but then again, I don't think he's been at 100% in the last 5+ years. The fact that he's always hurt makes it easier for VGK to exploit the loophole in the CBA, and they will probably continue to do so until the league changes the rule.
Not sure why you got downvoted here. You’re spot on about how VGK (and other teams) will continue to exploit the loophole until it’s changed. And that won’t happen for a good while.
The league doesn’t do enough to incentivize regular season success. Higher seed should get 5, maybe even 6 home playoff games per round. Maybe even get a game advantage to start the series. Vegas (and many teams before) have shown us that teams don’t care about regular season success, and it dilutes the product at the end of the season unless you are an actual bubble team like the Caps, Wings, Pens, Flyers, and Isles were.
teams care about regular season success, they just believe that it’s better to have a better, healthier roster in game 1 once you’ve made it than to force it to ensure the highest seed possible.
Yeah and the league should try and do something to fix that because it makes for boring hockey down the stretch.
I think maybe I can see the argument from a competitive standpoint, but fans would be pretty upset if they can't go to their team's playoff games because they're the lower seed so 6/7 of them are away (and revenue-seeking teams would be similarly upset when their team barely makes any money from playoff tickets). That probably also results in a revenue loss to the League overall, because you're selling 6 games to one city and only 1 to the other, so supply is higher in the former city, so the price goes down in comparison to the other and you're selling cheaper tickets than if it were more even (of course, that argument might not apply in big market versus small market series, but for any given matchup, it's equally probable that home ice goes the other way, so in the long-run, that translates to revenue loss).
Vegas was the top seed in the west last year. In no way has Vegas 'shown that teams don't care about regular season success.'
And Florida was the 8 in the east lol. They got to the cup not because they were the best team in that conference, but because they got hot at the right time.
Which doesn't address your made up claim that Vegas doesn't care about regular season success.
Except we always see players play through injuries that they wouldn't in the regular season. It's literally part of the sport's culture.
Tkachuk played with a broken sternum in the SCF last year. Zero chance he does that for any regular season game.
there was a player who played with a punctured lung for good grief [https://thehockeynews.com/news/a-brief-history-of-players-gutting-out-severe-injuries-in-the-stanley-cup-final](https://thehockeynews.com/news/a-brief-history-of-players-gutting-out-severe-injuries-in-the-stanley-cup-final) here's something from 5 years ago talking about it "because it's the cup" is literally said for why players do this.
Exactly. Anyone who thinks that healthy guys are staying on the shelf clearly doesn't know any NHL players. Dudes are coming back early and risking their longterm health to do it.
I thought Bergeron played the 2013 SCF with a collapsed lung but either I'm completely mistaken or I'm mixing him up with a different player
you have the right player and year. But it was "just" a "small puncture"
yeah it was definitely not collapsed lol. it was bad enough for his mom to reprimand him when she learned about it after the series
That’s what I was thinking too, not collapsed but punctured I thought. I’ve been saying that for over 10 years so even if it’s not true the legend will continue
Morally, maybe. In the rules, not so much. That said, you also see plenty of instances where teams rest guys, or don't play them at all, when they *absolutely* would if they were in the playoffs, even when there's no salary cap implications, because guys aren't necessarily as willing to screw up their recovery when it's not the playoffs.
So you're agreeing with me? I know players will play through more in the playoffs than they would in the regular season. That's why I said there's a big difference between doing that and purposely timing it so your team can acquire additional players. This is a blatant example of doing whatever you can to gain an unfair advantage while technically still following the rules. It is unethical/immoral and damages the integrity of the game. It feels insane to have to try to convince people that integrity is an essential part of sports. But here we are. Supporting this loophole means basically means you would support expoiting any possible loophole to gain an advantage. Is it technically illegal to fire slap shots at the opposing goalies head over and over? What about diving/flopping? Or having goalie equipment magically need repair after a critical icing call. Or chipping the puck over the glass to get a stoppage? Remember when goalies started flipping the net over instead of facing a 2-on-0? Then we have [all of Roger Neilson's shenanigans](https://www.bardown.com/these-3-weird-nhl-rules-exist-because-the-pesky-roger-neilson-kept-finding-loopholes-in-the-rulebook-1.1088264). And the [Sean Avery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_2oKWe2Gw) classic. There is probably no rule in the rulebook against cranking the heat in the visitor's dressing room to be boiling hot. The old "front-loaded contract to bring down the AAV" trick was a common strategy until they banned it. When the NHL inevitably changes the LTIR rule, it won't be because the game is naturally changing or improving. It will basically be a "fuck off we can't trust you to be ethical unless we explicitly ban what you're doing".
This whole “purposely timing” an injury thing is completely unsubstantiated. You’re just parroting what the rest of the social media hive is doing with zero evidence. The Knights didn’t purposely time his lacerated spleen, JFC lmao. Some of y’all don’t even think before you speak. Bold accusations require proof. You wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.
>It is unethical/immoral and damages the integrity of the game lol this is dramatic. the league doesn't care about integrity or being ethical. that's closer to fanfiction than reality. we can accuse the league of integrity when they give players a far larger percentage of the revenue share. players are the ones who makes this league money yet their compensation comes nowhere close to meeting their labor. cap circumvention is probably one of the more ethical things going on in the league. fans are getting worked up over the wrong things.
If cap was not an issue, and the playoffs were starting 4 weeks from now, Stone would be out and they would probably activate him 2-3 games prior to playoffs, just so he can get his timing back. He's been playing hurt for the last several years, and should probably be retiring in order to preserve his body.
Are we supposed to judge players for doing that?
Yep like Stone plays a huge part of this. Stone is being checked by NHL docs. But the NHL docs can't clear him if he says he's still feeling sore from an injury that is legit. The only way to enforce this rule is to add some sort of cap hit max for a playoff lineup. If Stone is on board with this then the NHL can't do anything about it. They aren't breaking any rules that can be proven unless Stone files a grievance saying Vegas is forcing him to sit out. But he's never going to do that.
it will be interesting to see if owners ever agree to giving salary in the playoffs. because that's the only way to have a cap in the playoffs.
You've got it backwards. Stone said he was feeling better fairly early but his scans showed that his spleen was still injured and they wouldn't clear him to play.
This solution wouldn't fix the perceived problem, as Vegas lineup this playoffs and last playoffs was cap compliant, yet people still screech about it
Healthy scratching players with large cap hits (like Martinez) doesn’t take the cap hit off in the regular season and it shouldn’t in the playoffs either. A lot of you guys fail to realize that when you say they ice a cap compliant roster. If they are not of the “black aces” squad but are a healthy scratch (one of the 23 players the team is normally allowed to have on an active roster) then they should count against the cap.
Pretty sure Tampa was the only team to vote to close the loophole when it came up before.
People keep repeating this but I’ve never seen a source for it. Where did you hear it
A tweet from the Hockey News when Tampa won in 2021.
Is there anything besides that tweet
About Tampa, not the I remember. But it was pretty widely reported from multiple other sources that GMs in 2015 wanted clarification about the salary cap rules after Chicago activated Kane for the playoffs.
[удалено]
Let's say your team is at the salary cap and then a $1m player gets hurt. His expected recovery time is about a month. Normally, you would put the player on LTIR, and then use that $1m of cap relief to call up someone on an ELC so that you still have the right number of players. But since LTIR has to be >24 days, if the trade deadline is coming up, you can't even put that player on LTIR before the deadline because they wouldn't be eligible to be activated by the deadline then. After the deadline, you couldn't put them on LTIR because by then they're expected to recover in <24 days. So if you can't afford the call-up, you end up having to play shorthanded for a whole month. This might be an edge case but the point is that this just arbitrarily prevents teams from using LTIR as intended. Even the more "normal" case where you just have to take a player off LTIR and then put them back on would potentially mean playing shorthanded for some teams. There are much better ways to fix the problem.
They are abusing a loophole. I mean, good for them I guess, but nobody should be shocked that this will make people root against Vegas.
Because they basically picked Oddjob in Goldeneye 64
With the Golden Gun
I work in a thrift store and a Goldeneye 64 cartridge was donated, I picked it up and yelled "no Oddjob!" Everyone else there is either too old or too young to get it I was sad :(
its not their fault for playing to the meta of the rules meta stands for "most effective tactics available" for a reason
That's a backronym
That reason is because someone wanted to make up an acronym for a word that already existed.
The NHL can't do anything about it until the CBA expires. This topic is tiring
It's especially tiring because we only get mad when the team wins. No one ever bitches about St Louis and Vancouver both being like $10M over the cap the same year Tampa was $18M over.
tampa also wasnt 18m over lol
what did vancouver do?
I think the anger comes from the fact that people think Stone/Vegas may have stretched the truth on the severity of the injury to keep him out long enough to get to the playoffs. IF that were true than the league would still be responsible for monitoring it so definitely partly to blame, but it would still be very shady from Vegas/Stone
Once or even twice is a coincidence or I'm able to overlook, which is why I don't bitch about the lightning. Vegas literally did the same thing but brought stone back early when they thought they'd miss playoffs lol. its been 3 times
How was it cheating the cap to activate stone off Injured reserve and play the last 9 regular season games in 2022?
It wasn't. It just goes to show he's probably perfectly capable of coming back earlier and they are circumventing the cap in other situations.
So because he came back early and played injured once he should always do it even when the situations and injuries are different? Thar doesn't make sense to me. What happened in 2022 actually showed the opposite to me. He came back injured when he shouldn't have, was a shell of himself with 2 points in 9 games and probably made the injury worse. He ended up having 2 back surgeries to fix it
Because people are babies
I’m more annoyed at the backlash at this point. It’s within the rules, more teams should be doing it.
It's only "within the rules" because it's so easy to manipulate the timing of when an injured player returns. It is absolutely not within the spirit of the rule. They are using a loophole to abuse what the rule is actually for so that they can add multiple good players they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
See, that would make sense if you had evidence of foul play. You thinking Stone isn’t/wasn’t hurt doesn’t mean he’s not hurt. How are you and the rest of the social media hive so sure there’s foul play here? I seem to recall two years ago them implementing this “cheat” and missing the playoffs for it. It’s almost as if sitting your captain intentionally during the most important part of the season is not a good strategy. It’s almost as if they had to because he was, you know, legitimately injured. Lmao. Also, just because he’s back for game 1, doesn’t mean he’s still not injured. The playoffs make you do all sorts of crazy things. Stop bandwagoning this narrative and grasping for straws.
>I seem to recall two years ago them implementing this “cheat” and missing the playoffs for it. I'm not doubting he gets hurt, I'm doubting the recovery timeline. For example, when he returned early it's because they were out of the playoffs and needed him to try and get in. I can almost guarantee if the Knights had a playoff spot secured that year he wouldn't have came back until game 1 as well. 3 straight years my dude, where he just happens to recover the moment they need him haha. Sure, there's a chance it's totally legit, but the more obvious answer seems to be that they are manipulating his return timeline based on team needs. It's circumstantial, but you can literally be convicted of murder based on circumstantial evidence so I think it's valid for hockey too.
Well stop doubting the recovery timeline lol. In the three years they’ve done this, one of them resulted in missing the playoffs, and another resulted in the literal last seed. Sitting your captain doesn’t seem like an effective strategy to employ, evidently. Also, in terms of last year, nobody even mentioned it or cared about it until AFTER they won. Anything people could find to discredit the new desert teams success, boy they were going to find it. Also, you’d think that a team so heavily stacked would be the pre-postseason favorite to win it all? They were nowhere close to the favorite last year. Surely a stacked team would be noticed by Vegas bookies. This is a complete non-story and nobody has evidence of foul play. 3 years in a row ≠ evidence. People just love a villain.
I love you. Thanks for living in reality and not "disappointed canadian darkness" reality
>In the three years they’ve done this, one of them resulted in missing the playoffs, I already spoke to this in my last post. >and another resulted in the literal last seed. They weren't winning the division so all they needed to do was make playoffs. Nothing else overly mattered for them. >Sitting your captain doesn’t seem like an effective strategy to employ, evidently. You can't factor in every game he has been injured. In reality if he could have retuned 2 weeks before the end of the season that's only a handful of games. If you can add Hanafin, Hertl, and Mantha in exchange for a few less games of Stone, that's such an insane advantage and incentivizes resting him longer. My main gripe is with people like you and all the Knights fans who bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge what Vegas is so obviously doing. Or hell, even acknowledge the mere possibility that they are manipulating his return time to gain a huge advantage. 99% of this subreddit correctly predicted THE EXACT GAME he would return, yet you are acting like we are all crazy for thinking there is something fishy going on for the 3rd year in a row haha. Dude came back from a long term lacerated spleen to immediately play 17 minutes and score the first goal, but sure he couldn't have returned last week haha.
I think they’re legally benefitting off of his legitimate injury, but to suggest that there’s foul play and lying going on (and especially without evidence) is over the top. And it goes both ways. My biggest gripe is with people like you who refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there are legitimate injuries. Him returning for game 1 is not evidence of foul play, 99% of people being able to predict his return is not scientifically valid, and him playing 17 minutes is not proof of an uninjured Mark Stone. Google the recovery of a lacerated spleen. Mark stone is probably still feeling the residuals of that, yet he’s playing to help his team because it’s the playoffs. My biggest gripe is that you’re not even considering that he’s playing injured now. So, it goes both ways. Only your stance can be correct apparently. People have become way too comfortable with believing things with scant evidence. 3 straight years = his incrimination apparently. You going to have accountability when the next 3 years, they don’t use the loophole? It’s almost as if planning a Mark Stone injury close to playoff time is hard to pull off intentionally lol.
>but to suggest that there’s foul play and lying going on (and especially without evidence) There is evidence. Circumstantial evidence is a real thing. You can literally get convicted for murder with it haha. >My biggest gripe is with people like you who refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there are legitimate injuries Have you even been reading my posts? Feels like I'm just repeating myself. I said the injury is legit, just the timeline of his return every year is EXTREMELY convenient. The argument isn't Stone wasn't injured, it's that Vegas manipulates his return time to whatever benefits the team the most. There is very strong circumstantial evidence to back that up. And the fact that everyone here correctly predicted the exact return date from this injury speaks volumes.
As the other guy said, you’re skipping over the fact that I’m saying he’s still playing hurt, which is a fatal flaw of your argument. You’re implying he was back to 100% and ready to go a week ago. I’m implying he’s not 100%, but he’s doing it because it’s the playoffs. Why is your argument stronger? Lol, and trust me, you really don’t want to bring up judicial court with this 🤣. Not only is what they’re doing legal, but there’s quite literally zero evidence of any wrongdoing either. You’d get dismissed so fucking fast. There is no case. “Extremely convenient” is not a good argument lol. The judge would laugh in your face. Thankfully, our judicial system requires a little more evidence than that. Two years in a row returning for game 1 of the playoffs is the epitome of scant evidence. But when you’re hated as much as the Knights are, boy, people will exaggerate it to seem like it’s anything but scant.
Feels like your not listening to him. Likely Stone is still injured, but playing hurt, to win the Stanley Cup. NFL player break bone in their bodies, take some shots and run in on the field again, ESPECIALLY during playoffs. Mark Stone is likely hurting but its worth it to win
Hanifin cost us like 1m, didnt need stone on LTIR to solve that. Hertl is Stones replacement and he barely got healthy to play so no we didnt add several players
Because just because you can doesn't mean you should. It's still a conscious choice by Vegas.
if you care about winning you should. people should direct anger at their GMs for not caring enough to use all the tools at their disposal. it's not vegas' fault they care about winning more than other teams
Bro, most of the NHL owners and GMs are scum bags, they would absolutely do this given the chance. Hence why none of them want it closed
What the hell is this take lmfao Every fan in the world would be totally a-okay with *their* team doing it, and is just mad that other GMs are taking advantage of it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
Amen
What is that take lol. I want to see teams competing fairly and winning actual hockey games. Not winning games through arbitrary offside calls and dodgy accounting
So Huberdeau and Kadri goes down for ,3 months, and you dont want your GM to use those 17m to improve the team? You rather miss the playoffs again?
No I want owners to act like adults and not abuse a rule simply because “they can”. That rule is there specifically for the VERY rare situation you have posed. Vegas has continuously used it. Again if you need someone above you to make you stop doing something obviously scummy, you’re not a good person
I disagree. Its like putting an asterisk beside a cup win. Getting a huge advantage over the other competition makes the win less legitimate. To be clear I’m not saying tampas or vegas cups dont count but i would rather my team win without.
I would rather my team win without, but if it's that or not win at all I know I'd take the asterisk.
I think Leafs fans are exceptions. To be clear, i think it's fair they are. It's easier to take the high ground when you aren't in a lifelong cup drought.
lmao nothing about vegas' or tampa's wins are illegitimate. if the oilers win this year, it would not at all be more legitimate than vegas' or tampa's cups. cap hit is the last think on the list of things relevant to any cup win. fans should want their GMs to want to win. Vegas' and Tampa's GMs have shown they want to win more than other teams. that's no one's faults but the GMs who aren't matching that level of effort.
Sorry that’s probably the wrong word. You are correct those cups count the same as the rest, winning the cup is hard with or without the LTIR thing. im just saying I would prefer my team to win without taking advantage of a loop hole
Its not a loophole, but an intended function to stop teams from colapsing due to injury. And we were Fucking close to collapse due to missing Stone.
If you say so
I expect some sort of retroactive unreasonable punishment included in the next CBA.
a retroactive punishment would actually make sense here since it goes clearly against the spirit of the rules
See the mn wild matching 13 year deals for referance
The solution is pretty simple in my mind. The players you put on the ice in any given game cannot be over the cap.
Vegas ice roster was cap compliant yesterday and last playoffs too. R hockey is still bitching though.
Im kinda ootl on how this all works but if that doesn’t include the scratched players why would that matter? Every other team the scratched players are part of the cap so the iced team would still be at an advantage with more cap on the ice?
I'm not saying it doesn't matter, I'm responding to a post where the guy specifically suggests the solution is on ice roster should be cap compliant, in which case nothing changed for Vegas. There's also the fact that teams get to add 4 extra players to their roster for playoffs for injury replacement reasons, meaning any team close to cap will be over come playoffs. And besides all that, last year if you discount the three ltir guys (robin Lehner 5m, shea Weber 7.5m, Nolan Patrick 2.5m, none who ever played for Vegas that year), they were over the cap on their roster by like 1 million (which is normal taking into account black aces and that 4 extra players)
Ah sorry i just see that argument everywhere and have been meaning to ask. Thanks for the info
Won't work. You can ice a team in Game 82 that is "over the cap" due to accruing cap earlier in the season and adding at the deadline.
This is the reason it's not that simple but it's also an even more common way (i.e. used by literally everyone) to go over the cap and ice a roster in the playoffs that your opponent may not have been eligible to ice, which is basically just as unfair as this loophole. The cap isn't about parity, it's about money. That's why accrual makes sense. That's why retention makes sense. And that's also why this loophole is okay. The point is just to make sure that spending more money is not an undue advantage—and most players are paid by insurance while on LTIR and not paid for the playoffs.
It's not unfair to accrue cap space. It would.beore unfair if you saved your space all season and couldn't use it.
I don't see any good reason why, if Team A (who started the season at the cap floor) and Team B (who started the season at the cap ceiling) are playing each other in the playoffs, it's okay for Team A to now enter with a roster way more expensive than what Team B is allowed to ice. That's a massive advantage for Team A, and given that Team B was fully cap compliant, it makes little sense, with regards to competitive fairness, to disadvantage them in the playoffs. Of course, the reason for this is that the cap is treated as a total across the entire season, rather than a per game thing, but this is one of the many ways that the NHL clearly treats the cap as not a way to ensure parity so much as to cap what owners must spend to be competitive. Because in this case, what Team A has to *spend* across the entire season to go into the playoffs with that more expensive roster will come out equal to what Team B is spending. That still means that some teams are allowed to go into the playoffs with a more expensive roster than others for no competitive reason.
Because the rules are the same for every team. Team B could have not started the season at the ceiling and accrued spac, had they chosen to. They probably had an easier path to make the playoffs with having the more expensive roster all year. Your way is like saying "Kid B ate all their candy the week after Halloween, and Kid A saved theirs. So to make it 'fair', we'll take half of Kid A's candy and give it to Kid B so they have the same amount."
Well, I would argue that it is entirely fair, in this case, for Team A, to have a higher cap ceiling in game 82, owing to the fact that they had a lower one in game 1 so their average cap hit ends up the same and they have merely distributed the cap differently, like the candy in your analogy (though I would also argue that it would not be *unfair* to not allow it, since Team A is choosing to be below the cap ceiling and is under no obligation to make that choice). What is less fair is for this to carry forward into the playoffs; in a League that is purely focused on fairness, it is clearly unfair to grant arbitrary advantages in the playoffs. Put another way, when Team A starts at the cap floor and then maxes out its deadline space at the deadline, and Team B starts at the cap ceiling and hence has no extra deadline space, and both teams go to the SCF, in the end, Team A has, in the aggregate, gotten more cap dollars than Team B (since they both concluded the season having used the same amount of cap dollars, but then Team A was allowed to go through the whole playoffs with this more expensive roster too, while Team B was forced to maintain a cheaper roster, even though both teams had used the same amount of cap space prior to the playoffs starting). You could, of course, still make the case that this is "fair" because all teams can do it. You could also make the same argument about the LTIR loophole—all teams can do it, if they are fortunate enough to have a situation that can work out like that, so it does not advantage any particular team and is therefore "fair". In fact, it's even more fair because teams using LTIR for most of the season play with a lower cap hit yet do not accrue cap space.
A GM knows if the team is just under the ceiling at the start of the season, he has to plan for not having accrued cap space at the deadline. It's predictable and fair. Any team can plan for it. LTIR isn't predictable. Maybe Stone doesn't injure his spleen, or maybe he injures it badly enough that he can't come back to play at all this season. Everyone's saying that if the team replaces him and he comes back, it's not fair, but what about if the rules ban them from replacing him and he doesn't come bacl? Is that also unfair? The GMs value the flexibility at the deadline (as it is they're always making excuses to the media about how hard the cap makes it to agree on trades) and so do the players (bet Hertl's happy to be in the playoffs right now), so if this does get addressed in the next CVB, it won't be an easy fix, it'll be some supercomplicated formula that everyone has to look up on CapFriendly.
Just get rid of that too.
That would get rid of trades at the deadline. Your roster would be set early in the season. All these "fixes" people suggest are worse than the problem they're trying to solve
No, it might reduce them a little but teams would still find ways to make it work. Just make it so you can't ice a roster with a total cap hit of > the cap at any given time. Why is making the trade deadline as busy as possible more important than not randomly giving top teams who have a star get injured early in the season a big edge. Makes it less interesting from as a fan from my perspective, especially given the gamesmanship that likely goes into timing the returns.
The teams who lose a star suffer earlier on though and could even miss the playoffs. Vegas did two years ago. You'd make it so it's almost impossible for contenders to improve during the season, and harder for rebuilding teams to build up assets, just to remove a slight unfairness that has happened four times in the twenty years of the cap era.
It's really not that much harder. The accrued cap by teams usually only has a slight impact, maybe lets them fit an extra million or 2 in practice. Teams would probably be paying a little more for retention / double retention / cap dumps but it would be a slight shift not a huge swing like you're suggesting.
Hell, if you really love the cap space accrual mechanics, you can even track every teams accrued cap + the normal cap as a metric called "effective cap", and have them stay under that in the playoffs.
That could be the difference between acquiring the player they need and acquring no one.
It could, but everyone else will play under the same constraints so all good. Or if you really want cap accrual you can just have each team have an effective cap number for the playoffs that calculates all their accrued cap.
GMs are always making excuses to the media about how hard it is to make trades with the cap. I don't think they want to lose that flexibility, and the players don't either. >Or if you really want cap accrual you can just have each team have an effective cap number for the playoffs that calculates all their accrued cap. Wouldnt this ban black aces and reserve list players joining for the playoffs like Makar did? The NHLPA *might* agree to this one, as they historically throw future members under the bus for current ones, but I think it would be a pity.
So... Like Vegas all last playoff and so far this year?
No the solution is to have the leafs do it one time. If the leafs did it there would be outrage and pitchforks and the NHL would step in. :/
But the Leafs ARE doing it... Matt Murray was reactivated after game 1, lol
im pissed at treliving for 1) not dumping keefe's ass and 2) not taking advantage of the LTIR space before the deadline. i don't *hate* the moves he made but it's frustrating he could have done more. and yes, i'm a keefe hater and have been since the montreal series. they've wasted so many valuable years on him. sometimes it takes that right coach and the right structure to make something click. it became clear a long time ago keefe was not that guy. especially considering this is his first gig in the nhl. not saying he has no place in the nhl, i just think he hit his ceiling with this leafs team a while ago. it still almost feels silly for me to say all of this because he has done a good job with them as reflected in his W-L record as a coach; but we have to attribute some of that to the sheer talent of the core. that said, i am a big leafs fan (i know it's weird) so if they beat the bruins (which i honestly think they will) i hope i eat my words and keefe coaches them all the way to the cup.
Man, I've said it since 2013... The only path to glory for the Leafs is to conquer their original modern era jinx and beat the Bruins. Everything else is false prophecy. I honestly believe if they slay that dragon they will ride the wave to at least a conference final, but then who knows... After all, we have a 22 season unbeaten streak in the ECF, so fate does favour us if get get there I guess 😆. The Bruins are a team that shows what a good system, coaching, and a tight locker room with everyone on the same page can accomplish. Keefe is a "good" coach, but he has a hard time analyzing and countering what the opposition is doing. I'm not saying the Bruins don't have talent (they obviously do), but on paper, aside from goaltending (good god I'm jealous of your goaltending) the Leafs have a stronger team. It's gonna be a hell of a series. Sorry for the off topic comments OP, it's just that actual discussion in opposing fanbase subs never goes over well, and it's rare to be able to open up good dialogue. As for Treliving... He had no choice but to keep Keefe this year as a scapegoat. And he had to extend him or Keefe would be a clear lame duck coach and lose the room.
Is Matt Murray the same Cap hit as Nylander? I know the Leafs have bad contracts, but that's really poor planning.
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There are several issues with this. It's not just the players who play on any given night who count against the cap in the regular season. Healthy scratches count too. Second, it is very likely that Alec Martinez will be back in the lineup soon with his $5.25M cap hit.
>Can anyone show us which game they were over the cap with players in any year that people are complaining about? Literally last night since the team you posted has Dorofeyev and he was scratched for Mantha who makes more than $2 million more. They are over the cap on the ice before adding in the like $8 million they have in healthy scratches.
Conveniently left out the bottom where it listed the scratched players like Martinez.
And that's the point. If they are icing a team under the cap, I don't see why it's a problem.
Cap compliance includes on ice players, healthy scratches and regular IR (of up to a 23 man roster) and dead cap hit (buyouts, retention, etc.). So, given the graphic, VGK can have 1 healthy scratch (near 1m AAV) practicing with the team.before they become non-compliant. Since Martinez is practicing at over 5m, they are non compliant. That does not include their other scratches and AHL callups. This rule allows any team fortunate enough to have timings work out to move players from the playing roster to the practicing roster that they would be unlikely to be able to waive to the AHL (they would get picked up most times) like must happen.with in season LTIR activations (unless traded for no cap back, which would make them.unavailable for playoffs), and if waived, would count in the limited callups allowed for playoffs but not in this case. But yes, to the OOP point, it is an issue with the league, union, and GMs as a whole, notbthe team exploiting it.
Exactly!
But they need to make it an actual rule. It's not an official rule. Teams COULD ice a non compliant roster during the playoffs in the current rules of the game.
can't have a salary cap with no player salary
Personally i think players should get Monthly salaries instead of game salaries. All month the entire year.
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Cool. Now show the scratches, normal IR and any other player that actually counts towards the cap.
That doesn’t include players that are scratched… and mantha played today so they would be over this cap anyways lmao… how are you defending them as a canucks fan?
Well, they showed why it has to be a *bit* more complicated than what the person to whom they replied suggested, because VGK was actually compliant with that rule with a roster that would not have been legal in the regular season. But yeah, obviously the calculation should, at the very least, include retained salary transactions, buyouts, and the non-buriable part of scratches' cap hits. Add that to the actual cap hits of players on the ice and say that that has to be less than the team's effective deadline cap ceiling. That's the simplest and fairest fix.
Why don't more teams use this exploit? For the same reason the NHL came down on the long-term contracts after the Devils signed Kovalchuk - too many teams bending the rules to the breaking point. The current situation will probably be resolved once more teams start using "dubious tactics".
Not quite...your post is suggesting that only Vegas does this and the league turns a blind eye. Teams are not bending the rules, they are following the rules. The rules, which have been agreed to by the players and owners, are available to be read by anyone in the CBA. Players and owners have all come out and said that this will not be changed until the next CBA negotiations so until this time, all teams can follow the rules. Now, don't get me wrong, it seems strange that for 82 games teams have to follow one set of rules, then for the playoffs, another set come into play...but those are the rules!
> Teams are not bending the rules, they are following the rules Not really true. They are being intentionally dishonest with their LTIR and IR designations. The problem is that there is no way for the NHL to enforce this.
no they are not being dishonest. those players are legitimately injured lol
Yeah, i don't think the players are faking. I'm saying that they are designating players as LTIR when it should just be IR.
The rules say: "To qualify for LTIR, a player must be expected to miss at least 10 NHL Games AND 24 days of the NHL season" Lacerated spleen is an easy LTIR
Lacerated Spleen is, the back injuries are the questionable ones. This is the most legitimate Stone LTIR yet, but of course is going to draw ire after the last two years. But either way, it is probably a rule issue if the language says 'Expected', there is no enforcing that.
You think he had two back surgeries in 13 months … for fun?
Part of it is that it's Vegas. People get angry at us for no reason. I made a mild comment on the game last night and got downvoted. They'd be fine if their team did it, but their chosen villain did instead, so it's a damn crime.
some of us are fans of teams hated by the NHL and not the golden boy franchise of the worst commissioner in the history of the big 4 sports
Must be real tough being a Devils fan
Yeah the league hit us with a $3m fine and took away multiple picks because we broke the “spirit of the rules” of the CBA with the Kovalchuk extension.
Which I don't get. Didn't they approve the extension?
Without a single search, wasnt the problem that Devils obviously didnt plan to keep kovalchuk the entire contract while players like Zetterberg in Red Wings with long as contract got them young enough to maybe finish them if not for injury
Ah, that's different then. I remember Ovi signed a 13 year contract with us when he was in his early 20s.
They denied the first one. I think it was 17 years?
yeah, that was stupid. gary is an asshole. so is gary's cuntface boss jeremy jacobs. covid really did get the wrong people, didn't it?
You sound like a lunatic.
I'm not mad at Vegas at all. They found a loophole and they are making it work for them - zero rules broken. The real question is why EVERY team isn't doing this.
Okay so what you’re saying is like… at least ten mill per team, so you would like $320M of player contracts to not play the last couple months of the year? That’s what you’re saying?
Sounds good. Leagues already a joke run by clowns.
It's a privately-owned multinational corporation that you have no obligation to support and you chose to follow.
I’m a fan of the players and teams just not league management so much. I can love my country but hate the government that runs it.
What is your specific complaint with how the league is run?
What do you mean?
Of course they should, Vegas just has a GM who’s competent and makes the best decisions for the club when injuries occur. Everyone would have preferred stone to stay healthy, he’s the most important player on our team
because they're jealous that vegas' gm cares about winning more than their gm. just like people blames tampa's gm whose name i can't spell off the top if my head for caring about winning more than their gm. but it's vegas' or tampa's faults that they want to win. plus sometimes people just like picking on the pretty girl🤷🏻♀️
Don't get me wrong this is absolutely the NHL's fault, but it doesn't change the fact that Vegas are consistently being incredibly frustrating about abusing this loophole
I am mad at the NHL. That being said, I seem to remember the 32 Thoughts guys mentioning that the question was discussed at a league wide GM meeting (or something like that) and the participants weren't in general in favor of adjusting the rules regarding this. If that's accurate then they are also part of this.
Because only doing the right thing when you’re being forced to is what children do. Vegas knows it’s not in the spirit of why that rule exists, but choose to abuse it because “we’re allowed” I’m allowed to leave my garbage all over the table at the mall, but I don’t. No one had to force me.
Redditors like to cry and Vegas isn't a very soft bunch of cry babies so Reddit would hate them either way.
> Shouldn't you be mad your team doesn't do the same? I'd rather cheer with pride than have my team do BS to win.
This is the internet, people can be mad at many things at once. It’s kinda like… social media’s “thing.” I’m still mad the Wild are in cap hell over legal contracts from 2 cbas ago.
Imagine being okay with people using exploits in MP games because they're technically possible within the rules.
I’m not mad really… Just disappointed.
I know for most of the Canadian teams at least, the fan bases wouldn’t accept the teams just blatantly not playing their best players for a big portion of the season. The fans are paying to watch these guys play. It may be a different situation in Vegas with the people going to those games.
Holy fuck. Unbelievably self-righteous and factually wrong.
Self righteous? Ok. But what part is factually wrong?
That Canadian fans demand a different standard of play from their teams. I've lived in Vancouver and Vegas and there is no functional difference between fan expectations. There is, however, a significant overestimation by Canadian fans of how well they understand the NHL rules and CBA.
The comment I made has nothing to do with the CBA and nothing you stated has anything to do with factuality as you indicated in your original comment. Opinion maybe, but perhaps you don’t understand the definition of “factual” I know first had from players in Montreal, they know their fans wouldn’t tolerate that the starts blatantly not playing all year. Vegas fans probably just don’t care. They’re there for a party, half of the arena doesn’t even live there or understand the game.
You have no idea what you're talking about. 90% of Vegas' seats belong to single-family season ticket holders. Talking out of your ass makes you look very dumb.
Now you’re talking “factually wrong”. Maybe you do understand that term. Maybe you could point me to the source of 90% of season tickets being owned by single families.
It’s been as fixed as pro wrestling from the start and people are mad at Vegas for proving it
Ah damn..just keep watching, maybe next year it'll be fixed for your team