[HockeyinHD]

Originally Posted by Drunkspleen

This is all so ridiculous HIHD, the Bertuzzi and Homer deals will have a cap hit either equal to, or greater than, the salary that the player is paid over the course of the deal (greater than if the guys were to retire early since they are 35+ deals).

Again, it is a question of degree. The Bert and Homer deals lower cap hit by extending term. The Kovy deal lowers cap hit by extending term. The Z and Franzen deals lower cap hit by extending term. The Hossa deal lowers cap hit by extending term. The Keith deal lowers cap hit by extending term. The Lecavalier deal lowers cap hit by extending term.

They all employ exactly the same mechanic to bring down the cap value of a player.

The Kovalchuk deal has the potential, and arguably demonstrates the intent, to have a player, play for a certain amount, while the total cap hit is significantly less than the amount paid to the player.

Which is legal in the current CBA if one follows what is written in the CBA. Now, a somewhat 'activist judge' arbitrator came down on Bettman's side in the matter, so a large part of this discussion is moot.

Still.

You can argue pedantics about how dissimilar that is to a non exhaustive list all you want, but the fact of the matter is that the Kovalchuck deal was designed to avoid some cap hit from ever existing, unlike trading in a second year on a 35+ contract.

And you think Tampa's going to have Lecavalier on their roster when he's 39 with a 1.5 million dollar salary and a 7.727 million dollar cap hit?

And you think Detroit is going to have Z or Franzen on their roster when they are 39 with a 1 mil salary and 6.08 mil cap hit and 3.954 mil cap hit, respectively?

And you think Hossa, Keith, et al will still be on their teams roster at advanced ages with big cap hits but small real-salary numbers?

Please. NJ is getting screwed here because they were just a tiny bit more blatant about it than the 6-10 other big time contracts were when they mitigated the Cap in the exact same manner.

The same goes for your final point about the Zetterberg and Franzen contracts, sure they may do the same thing, but the likelyhood of them retiring early is entirely different to the likelyhood of Kovalchuck retiring early and the law isn't simply binary, that's why there is a difference between Manslaughter and Murder in the first degree, much like there is a difference between the Zetterberg deal and the Kovalchuk deal, the fact of the matter is, even the approved Kovalchuk deal is a more significant case of "cap circumvention" than anything Holland did with his 2 contracts.

That's factually untrue if one looks at the cap savings involved. Both the Z and Franzen deals shave a million dollars a year off the total cap hit of each contract by adding step down provisions. The yearly difference between the Kovy deal that was rejected and the one that was approved is 600k.

And I should note that the structural definitions of both Manslaughter and Murder are actually in place and have a pretty clear list of what qualifies for what.

That's the problem with this CBA. It doesn't have that. It doesn't have anything close to that.

A better analogy would be having a highway system with no speed limits, just cops that pulled you over and gave you a ticket if they thought you were going too fast.

How fast are you allowed to go? Nobody knows. The point of the ticket is to make sure that everybody slows down. The police will decide what is speeding and what isn't.

That's what the point of this punishment by Bettman is. He's trying to write a big enough ticket that everybody in the whole NHL will quit trying to drive through the huge exception he stupidly left in the CBA, even though he worked on something in the NBA's CBA precisely to deal with long contracts.