Tag: NHL

34.5 million reasons I’d be against compliance buyouts in the next CBA if I were a player

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Escrow has been a dirty word among players for the better part of a decade now, and it’s understandable knowing that they see an extra 10%, 15%, or even 18% shaved off of their every hard earned paycheck. However, it’s a necessary evil for the revenue sharing agreement in cap system to work. As it is right now, the salary cap system is set up to overpay the players from the outset of every season. The salary cap ceiling is set to create a 57.5/42.5 revenue split between the players and league. Escrow exists to redistribute the revenue so that it is split 50/50 at the end of every year, as the NHL and NHLPA agreed upon in the 2013 CBA. So every cap team in this league is an extra little bit of escrow tagged onto the players. There are also a few other well-known causes of escrow, such as the salary cap escalator, LTIR, and cap-advantaged contracts, that are explained here.

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There is, however, one unique cause of escrow spiking that I have heard little of. It is something that happened in the two years after the 2013 CBA was signed and that something is also being discussed as a likelihood in the next round of labor negotiations. That something is compliance buyouts. Compliance buyouts are get-out-of-jail-free cards for teams that don’t like one of their contracts. These buyouts still require the teams to pay the player a large percentage of his contracted salary, but there is no cap hit associated with the buyout (unlike regular buyouts). Continue reading “34.5 million reasons I’d be against compliance buyouts in the next CBA if I were a player” →

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Reviewing Lundqvist’s Year-to-Date Stats, January Edition

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I looked at Lundqvist’s year-to-date stats back in late November and found that his play this year has been statistically weaker than every season since 2007-08 (which was the first season I could get the necessary data). I have added in the last five weeks of data and re-configured my graphs to make them a bit more reader friendly:

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Above is Henrik Lundqvist’s year-to-date 5v5 save percentage since 2007. This time around, I have removed all of the data from previous seasons and condensed them into three descriptive stats: minimum, average, and maximum. Continue reading “Reviewing Lundqvist’s Year-to-Date Stats, January Edition” →

The Cap Advantage Recapture Penalty: Part Four

Published on by slappersandstats2 Comments

@Chris_Beardy

I originally started researching and writing about the Cap Advantage Recapture Penalty (CARP) in relation to Shea Weber trade rumors last summer. It was pretty shortly thereafter that I started bandying about the phrase “Shea Weber is untradeable.” The liability of the potential CARP looming over a small market franchise like Nashville would be too great, especially considering the significant likelihood that Weber will decide not to play until he’s 41. But it happened and now I’m wrong about that. (Well, not about the CARP stuff so read on…)

(Just a quick note, my first, second, and third posts on this topic can be found at the links provided. I highly suggest giving them a read if you need some background info on what the CARP is and how it works.)

However, the exciting thing is that now everyone is talking about the CARP and want to learn more about it. I still cling to my viewpoint that the NHL has done no wrong in creating this cap mechanism. The Predators (a) chose to match the offer sheet, (b) were a party to the creation of the current CBA including the creation of the CARP, (c) chose not to buy him out with their compliance buyouts, and (d) chose to trade him with $24.5m of cap advantage sitting on their books. They made multiple conscious decisions to not limit their liability to this penalty. But, I can’t ignore the fact that others are right about how the NHL will not let a small market team, especially one that is such a major success story in their push to hockey-fy the South, be crippled with a penalty that could easily set the franchise back 5-7 years. Thirty other owner groups / GMs might say “tough nuggets” to them, but Bettman will certainly do what it takes to maintain 31 strong teams and markets in the league.

How the NHL might undo Nashville’s CARP

Continue reading “The Cap Advantage Recapture Penalty: Part Four” →