tmash Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=286333 About time, the league needs to put a stop to this loophole. Although they are kind of being singled out for something a large number of teams have done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocket-1 Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Why would the league need to stop this ? They're the ones who forced that with the lockout, those kind of deals will never stop under a salary cap era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jst-onge Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 This is simply front loading the contract. It states in the CBA that it is the average over the length of the contract. As long as the minimum and maximum are not exeeded it's good and start. You can still stack up a team if you are willing to pay for many years. I'm not sure if when buying out contracts whether or not it counts for half of the total contract for the remaining years or just half of the remaining years. If it is the latter you will be seeing a lot more longer front loaded contracts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
js2 Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Why didn't they go after Prongers contract which ends when he's like 44 or 45 years old? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmash Posted August 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 This is simply front loading the contract. It states in the CBA that it is the average over the length of the contract. As long as the minimum and maximum are not exeeded it's good and start. You can still stack up a team if you are willing to pay for many years. I'm not sure if when buying out contracts whether or not it counts for half of the total contract for the remaining years or just half of the remaining years. If it is the latter you will be seeing a lot more longer front loaded contracts. It's not simply frontloading if they have an agreement for him to retire before the contract is up, I assume that violates something. Why didn't they go after Prongers contract which ends when he's like 44 or 45 years old? Actually Pronger's deal is 100% fine because of the "over-35 rule" which the NHL claims applies, so if he retires his cap hit counts anyways: the full value of his contract will count against the cap no matter what (only out may be permanent injury) In the general case, why not go after player x, since there have been a few of these deals, I assume the NHL has some sort of evidence instead of just common sense in this case. Why would the league need to stop this ? Because it's a loophole that allows circumventing the salary cap since if the player retires early, not all the money he makes gets counted against the cap. They're the ones who forced that with the lockout, those kind of deals will never stop under a salary cap era. It has nothing to do with the cap, it has to do with that "average contract" rule that was put in place to close one potential loophole (putting off salary) and introduced a far larger one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roy_133 Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Why didn't they go after Prongers contract which ends when he's like 44 or 45 years old? They apparently are, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/sp...s_contract.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmash Posted August 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 They apparently are, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/sp...s_contract.html Did I miss something? I thought the NHL had already stated that the over-35 rule applied to Pronger, in which case his deal cannot take advantage of the loophole? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocket-1 Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 lol Graeme if you think it has nothing to do with the cap. lol is the only think that comes to my mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteenIsThaFuture Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Did I miss something? I thought the NHL had already stated that the over-35 rule applied to Pronger, in which case his deal cannot take advantage of the loophole? What they're investigating is the fact upon signing, the team thought they could get around the loophole because they openly talked about a player retiring before the end of its duration. When Philly signed it thinking Pronger was under 35 and accused of knowing Pronger would retire under those circumstances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteenIsThaFuture Posted August 1, 2009 Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Why would the league need to stop this ? They're the ones who forced that with the lockout, those kind of deals will never stop under a salary cap era. This is simply front loading the contract. It states in the CBA that it is the average over the length of the contract. As long as the minimum and maximum are not exeeded it's good and start. You can still stack up a team if you are willing to pay for many years. I'm not sure if when buying out contracts whether or not it counts for half of the total contract for the remaining years or just half of the remaining years. If it is the latter you will be seeing a lot more longer front loaded contracts. @jst-onge, the problem is that if a player signs it under 35, when they retire it comes off the cap, however these players are signing the deals getting all their money at market value and giving their teams below market value cap hits. @ Rocket: Heres my solution to that, 1. Get rid of Average Salary. Get rid of average cap hit and average salaries being what counts towards the Upper and Lower Limit. Sports critics are non-stop in pounding on MLB for their non-capped league, but I prefer their ways of paying players as opposed to a Cap system which is a true payroll. I realize the NHL used to operate like this, but I fail to see why the league cannot do this. Sure it wouldn't be as easy and you would have to plan a little harder to to fit things around a backloaded or frontloaded deal in a hard cap system with Limits, but with a cap that values the team true payroll as the cap hit, it will easily get rid of the frontload loop. Teams won't be able to as easily sign these deals, because such a huge % of their cap hit would come in the early years, that it would cripple their team (imagine Flyers fans or Rangers fans having to watch Briere or Gomez have a 10 million cap hit)! Also players won't agree to backloaded deals unless they know they would retire prior to the deal ending. For NHL accounting purposes it would make things a little harder, but its a small price to pay to end this issue. My 2nd proposal is scaling contracts, seeing as we're working in a payroll system, it would be very unfair to teams who sign a guy to a frontload deal (if they choose to) and the cap comes down a few million, such as how it may in 2010-2011. In this system, players contracts scale up and down according to the cap floor/roof that year and according to their payment. In fact I think they should do it even in the current system, with the cap fluctuating so much year-to-year. So lets make an example: Marian Gaborik signs a 7 year 50 million deal, that averages out to 7.14 per year. Now lets say the team makes his payment plan as such: Year 1: 8 milliom Year 2: 8 million Year 3: 10 million Year 4: 8 million Year 5: 8 Million Year 6: 4 Million Year 7: 4 Million This is all under a 55 million cap. So in Year 1, Gaborik makes 14.55% of the cap hit. Lets say the cap goes up now to 60 million, that was 9% increase so to determine his Year 2 cap hit you increase his Year 2 salary by 9%, which comes out to 8.72 million. If it goes down in year 3 to 52 million, his Year 3 cap hit is now 8.67 mil. While that may not seem like such a huge drop when you take into account the 52 mil cap it is, in fact its 16.67% of the cap hit, so it scaled up in terms of % of cap hit as opposed to Year 1 as it was intended to. Some may argue that players may end up getting ridiculous amount of money or losing some because of this system, but really they wouldn't lose or earn a dime more than before. Because the players have already signed a CBA that intricately links salaries to revenues. Due to this agreement, if the players make too much they just write a big, fat check back to the owners, if they are underpaid (which is doubtful) the owners just write them a check until the players get the exact amount they're supposed to be paid according to the CBA. http://hockproject.blogspot.com/2009/07/cb...d-loophole.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmash Posted August 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Moneypuck, I don't think the reason for the NHL using the average salary was accounting or anything, and if you got rid of the "average" rule front-loaded contracts would largely go away. What the owners were worried about was "stacking" a team one season by structuring contracts in a way that a bunch of players were cheap at the same time. However, this hardly seems practical and their "solution" has been far more of a problem than the original problem would have. I agree, just make it simple and use the average. As for players signing for a percent of the cap instead of a fixed salary, I personally really like this since it will make it far easier to compare payer's contracts and in general just make more sense. But it seems too radical for either the owners or the PA. I also don't see how it effects the topic at hand. And you may be right about Pronger, that they are being investigated for trying to get around the cap, even though they failed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteenIsThaFuture Posted August 2, 2009 Report Share Posted August 2, 2009 As for players signing for a percent of the cap instead of a fixed salary, I personally really like this since it will make it far easier to compare payer's contracts and in general just make more sense. But it seems too radical for either the owners or the PA. I also don't see how it effects the topic at hand. The reason for that is, asides from its geneal usefulness in the current system, it would be more suited for the payroll system because owners would be afraid of the cap coming down and crushing their cap space because of frontloaded contracts they were already signed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmash Posted August 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2009 The reason for that is, asides from its geneal usefulness in the current system, it would be more suited for the payroll system because owners would be afraid of the cap coming down and crushing their cap space because of frontloaded contracts they were already signed. Huh? Maybe I misinterpreted your original idea, but wouldn't having a perecent-of-cap based system mean if the cap drops it would make no real difference? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteenIsThaFuture Posted August 2, 2009 Report Share Posted August 2, 2009 Huh? Maybe I misinterpreted your original idea, but wouldn't having a perecent-of-cap based system mean if the cap drops it would make no real difference? Wow braincramp on my part Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocket-1 Posted August 3, 2009 Report Share Posted August 3, 2009 The cap was a bad idea in the first place. It's only gonna get worst from now on, you have to take into consideration that the players who worked on the cap idea with the NHLPA were all veteran players towards the end of their career (guys who already had "enjoyed" the previous non era cap system and were about to leave within a few years) Now that the league got younger, you seriously expect these kids to accept less money than they could make ? If the cap was to really go down let's say just 2 seasons in a row.... what would happen then ? Guaranteed lock out #2. A good amount of teams are already pretty close to the actual cap, and the teams who are not, are teams in financial trouble so their owners won't be trilled to be "forced" to get more players on their roster and spend more money on their team because other successful teams (the teams who are making money and willing to give out these long term big contracts) who are close to the cap need to make some cap space and sent players their way. Players are soon gonna be hurt by this and the NHLPA is gonna stand up for their guys and here comes trouble all over again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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