I meant to say 20-21 for Kucherov - sorry for the mistake there!. Guess that's what happens when a team nearly threepeats.

Honestly the easy solution is to make it so teams just have to adhere to the salary cap even during the playoffs - seems weird to allow uncapped salaries during the most important part of the season

Tampa is like “hey guys someone could abuse this. Oh, your not going to do anything about it? Okay then.”

Easy solution: game to game, your dressed roster for any given game-day line-up still has to abide by the salary cap. Have to let teams bring in players, since injuries happen and sometimes you gotta bring up players from the AHL team, but you can't dress a roster for a game that goes over the cap in the playoffs.

I have to admit I did find it a bit suspicious that Mark Stone went from LTIR to leading all Vegas forwards in ice time in his first game back.

Salary cap needs to be based on net salaries not gross. Low-tax locations have a big advantage. Canadian teams get boned on the salary cap because you need to pay higher salaries for the players to earn the same

The concept for this rule was logical, if you lose one of your better players perhaps you can find a replacement before the playoffs. Unfortunately it does not take long for smart people to figure out a way to abuse this loophole, and clearly it needs amending. The argument that the Knights playoff roster is under the cap doesn't wash, because what the LTIR loophole allowed was for them to make trade deadline deals and bolster there line-up namely Barbashev...then Presto Stone returns and you can now press box the lesser players you would have had i.e. "Phil the thrill".

the way vegas used LTIR this year (and last year) is proof the system is working 100% as intended. stone gets hurt and vegas uses LTIR to fill the hole in the roster. stone comes back and uneeded skaters fall off the active roster. and like eck mentioned... vegas is still under the max cap with their active roster.

I think we could simply apply an eligibility rule regarding injuries. You have to have played, or at least counted towards the salary cap (no LTIR, but you can be healthy scratch) for 20 games to be eligible for a round of playoffs. If you want to be eligible for all 4 rounds, then you need to count towards the cap for 4 20-game blocks, basically the whole season. A player like Kucherov who missed the whole season, would not be eligible, plain and simple. But a player like Brendan Gallagher who missed half the season in 2020-2021 would only be eligible for 2 rounds.It might not be a perfect solution, but nothing is. I think this could at least help.

I’m sure Bettman will “fix this situation”.

Thank you for mentioning this, they need to change this.

Agree with the others. If the team is strong enough that they can put a guy on LTIR and still make the playoffs, then they are just using a strategy that is within the rules. If you don't like the rules, then we should change the rules.

I get all the cap talk, but Vegas used the system (this year, at least) with the spirit of the rule. They need extra guys to shore up the team while Stone underwent surgery (and their goalies recovered) and maintained a team undercap in the playoffs.

All the GM's met last year and talked about this and nobody wanted to change the rule.

Tampa won a cup using this trick. Kuch came in like he had been skating for months. It's easy to fix. If a team makes trades to use LTIR cap space, it's with the understanding the acquired players must be sent off roster with 100% of their cap buried when the injured player returns. Once off roster, they can't return. Obviously, the traded player would have to agree to this, which would also dampen the LTIR trade market.

1. Cap carries over to playoffs 2. Players need to play a set number of games after trade deadline to be eligible to dress for playoffs. This will hopefully stop players from finding a miracle cure for their ailment last game of the season.

Owners/GMs know it's there, they've known it's been there, they know teams use it to their advantage, they meet every year to discuss rule changes, etc. They're not changing it if they have any intention of doing so they would of done it already. In the end you just have to hope you team is in contention and can make one of these types of moves if so it can drastically increase you chances of winning it all.

Aside from the LTIR issue is the difference in which players are taxed based on the location of their team. It puts Canadian teams at a disadvantage to the league, and two states that have no state income tax, Florida and Vegas, have extra leverage when signing. I remember the Tampa Tribune doing an article breaking down how the Bolts were able to offer Stamkos $8.5 million a yr, which was the same take home for him as $10.5 million anywhere else. Apply that to your entire roster and there's a pretty big issue. In the last 30 years, NHL teams from Canada have made the SC final the same number of times as teams from Florida: 7 times each.

The league also says that no team tank for the number one pick, but they are full of it.

anyone notice in 2:13 that florida scored and the screen says vegas goal?

It has such an easy fix it is weird they even had/allowed this loophole. If you bring back 8million from LTIR than you have to sit 8million.

If Vegas wins Phil gets his name on the cup again right?

I’m thinking and this may be stupid but say for example Colorado know Landy is out next season so his cap completely comes off the books all good there with LTIR. But if you know a player will play this season and put him on LTIR maybe only half his cap comes off. Idk may be weird but something like that.

There should be a soft cap over the salary that changes every round. 5mil first round. 2nd round 10m. 3rd round 15m. Stanley unlimited. I feel that would be fine.

Idea: instead of having a trade deadline, have trade windows. Allow trades from July 1 to October 31, and January 1 to January 31. Allowing trades so close to the playoffs encourages too much monkeying with the system. "Well, we're not going to make the playoffs, so let's trade for some picks and then see how far we can fall in the standings to win the lottery." I hate drafts so much, they're anticompetitive and make teams (ownership and management, not the players) lazy.

My solution is partly understanding the 'trade deadline' - which is actually Playoff Eligible Roster. If a player has not yet played 50% of the games (either starter or back up for G), then they must be activated at the deadline to be available for playoff, regardless of injury. That would close this gapping hole.

I agree that it can be abused, an it does deserve a look over/ revision. A lot of people like to talk about depth and how teams prepare for it… but LTIR is abused for it. How to keep it in check?… maybe a cap per game? You have to be under a certain dollar value when you submit your roster for that night?

Season or Career ending injuries, deemed that by an independent doctor from the NHL, removes that players cap hit from the team while the player still receives salary and benefits. The 35+ restriction, however, will still apply and would apply to all players over the age of 35, regardless of when they signed their contract. Any non season or career ending injury will follow the current rules allowing teams to trade for replacements if non threatening injuries pile up as the rule intended. One emergency goalie (third stringer) is immune to all cap and waiver claims due to the importance of the goaltending position.

The simple fact that the NHL decided to allow teams to go over the Cap in the playoffs made it inevitable that some teams would try to stack things the way the Lighting did. It was inevitable. (It gets me that Tampa is allowed to get away with this, yet the Canucks were severely retroactively punished for Luongo's contract - even though it was perfectly legal at the time - can you see why people think there is a tiny bit of favoritism going on here......)

No NHL gm wants to change the rule because they know in the future they can use it when they are cup contenders. But the fans want it, this loophole creates a bad product on the ice. It kinda sucks when you know a team has to be over the cap to win the cup. It just takes the excitement away from the game. The NHL should just make the whole season a hard cap and dismiss any gm feedback because they are obviously biased.

In order for the league to fix this, all they need to do is hire league doctors to confirm cases for LTIR. Having 1 unbiased confirmation is all it takes to fix the issue. I personally think salary cap should just count during the playoffs as well as teams who dont make the playoffs are allowed to sign players as if it is their offseason to prevent teams from even attempting to abuse the rule in the first place (i dont know that much about the leagues rules, just the way i believe it should be regardless of if it is that way or not at the current moment)

Stone had back surgery and sat out 1/3d of the season. Everyone keeps trying to find an excuse to hate on the VGK. Whatever your opinions they built a team that is in its second Cup finals in it's first 6 years. Just the fact you roll the VGK into this while admitting they are still under their salary cap illegitimates your short and exposes an anterior motive.

I’ll just remind everyone that the only teams that voted to close this loophole in the last CBA negotiations were the Blues and Lightning

I feel like compensating for injuries is fair during the season

Could make some rules changes to lock the roster at the end of the regular season, so no AHL or other junior league call ups in the playoffs, might could extend the roster to 25 as well. They could also make some eligibility requirements for LTIR players (I.e. must have been off LTIR for last 8 games, dressed in at least 2 of said games, played a minimum total games that year, etc…). I get that they way that the cap is today that you can’t use that towards playoff games but could use it as a way to set a limit per game maybe? Like if the season is 82 games and the yearly cap is a flat $82 million then that’s $1 million per game played so use players per game salary and add them up to calculate that for playoff games? Might be easier said than done though. Honesty, none of the solutions to this problem take rocket scientists or mathematicians to figure out, but as most things go once you get 33+ people (a rep or more from each team and the league) in a room to discuss you’re blind to run into objections to all possible solutions, that is just politics.

Why i stopped caring, when does active trades end? Thought it was well before the end of regular season, so you have an ace 50mil slum, until post season?

the real hard question to ask here for eck in particular, would Grand Admiral Thrawn be a good Enforcer?

The cap needs to be the same in the playoffs bring in who you like but your team need to be the lower then the max cap going into the playoffs

ABSOLUTELY!

Pretty simple, you want to use LTIR, that player cannot return to play for the remainder of the season. The team gets full relief from the cap hit and can use it however they see fit, but the injured player is out for the year. IOW, cap relief is only granted for players with season ending injuries. Option 2 - keep it as is, however, if a team is to go over the salary cap with a player on LTIR, it can only be with players already in your system, either on 2 way contracts in the AHL, or a player on an AHL contract can be granted a temporary emergency NHL contract for the length of time until the injured player returns, in which case the replacement player would be exempt from waivers upon return of tge injured players. IOW, it's like the NFL, where if a player is injured and you're against the cap, you don't just sign or trade for another A level player, bc it would put you over the cap. You call someone up from your practice squad. This would ultimately benefit more players as well, getting AHL guys extended looks and a chance to earn an NHL contract in the future. And it would completely prevent teams from burying cap dollars on LTIR bc if they are a competitive team, they aren't going to want to play with Alex Barré-Boulet over Kucherov all season.

my suggestion for a new ltir rule, like the mlb has in september, increase the salary cap by some percentage points, 3-8, and that is the cap for the remaining of the season and playoffs... the salary cap should be active the entire season

Yeah, this is a real issue. Sad to see though

Is LTIR abused? Is it a loophole? Potentially, yes. There was a similar issue not that long ago with "backdiving" contracts, where players would sign something like a 12 or 15 year contract and would get something like 80 or 90% of the contract's value in the first handful of years and have a salary of $1 million or less for the remainder. This lead to players making BIG money, but having a reduced cap hit, and the strategy was that the player would likely retire before the contract ended and the team who was responsible would just wash their hands of it. The NHL saw what was happening, called it cap circumvention and put in new rules in the CBA: a 7 or 8 year contract limit, a limit on how much deviation there can be in salary values between the years of said contract, and that the grandfathered "backdiving" contracts now carried a "cap recapture penalty," meaning that if the player retired before the end of the contract, the team got hit with a penalty against their salary cap (or teams, in the case of Roberto Luongo; as both Florida and Vancouver ended up being penalized). Oddly enough, this penalty created an excuse for some of the LTIR "abuse" we've seen with the contracts of Marian Hossa, Shea Weber, etc. that cap-strapped teams would use to create space on their cap. It also created an avenue for budget teams (Arizona, Buffalo, etc.) to reach the salary cap floor, which could also be seen as abuse from the other side of the road. At the end of the day, the NHL GM meetings have discussed this a couple of times, and still haven't done anything about it, so our opinion on it doesn't really matter, but seeing teams take advantage of what's available to them doesn't really bother me, personally. It just is what it is.

NHL did a PI on Mark Stone medical records, and they defected No Misuse of the LTIR. Mark Stone is changing to the surgeon Eichel had for his neck for his back so he can be out less during the season.

Any time a league puts in a rule that essentially relies on the honor system, that rule will be exploited. Or, to put it another way, a team can’t stand on the moral high ground if they might face another team who has exploited the rule; they’re “forced” to do it.

In the world of business, a team will take any advantage available.

Yea it's more obvious than snow in January in Canada

Another thing I don’t like about whole salary cap topic is taxes. The salary cap should be counted as a NET Salary after taxes, so the states with lower taxes wouldn’t have such an advantage.

I want teams to be able to sign anyone for any amount. No lump sum bonuses, salary retention between teams or financial shenanigans. But on any given night, play-offs included, the team on the ice can only equal a total salary of x.

Why not make so the playoff salary cap is adjusted based normal salary cap + 1/2 of the injured players salary(maybe more)

Why is it that the cap doesn't apply to the playoffs anyway?

If our fellow Rangers did this the hockey world would lose their minds. Imagine re-signing Kane, placing him on LTIR after his hip surgery, and then just activating him in playoffs. The simple change is abiding by the cap. So, you want Kucherov, Stamkos, Kane, Stone in your lineup for playoffs? Fine. But you’re gonna have to make some tough decisions in who plays, who sits, and who gets called up. Personally, I would love that chaos AND giving kids coming up to prove themselves in the highest pressure situation (Using Chris Kreider as an example)

One solution could be players on ltir have to see an independent doctor every so often and if that doctor says they are fine to play they come off ltir. If the teams doctor and that doctor disagree there can be am arbitrator( but the process has to be fast) and if the arbitrator still says the player is fine, then he can either play or go on regular ir

The lighting abused the hell of it.

Something that most fans don't seem to be aware of is that the reason there's effectively no salary cap in the playoffs is because players are not paid a salary from their teams in the playoffs. Once the regular season ends the only additional payments received by players are to those on playoff teams that are paid from a "bonus" pool allotted by the NHL. As you mentioned, the easiest solution to prevent abuse would be to enfore that the teams on ice are within the salary constraints in the playoffs. If this was the rule Vegas would still be within those constraints, however those Chicago and Tampa teams would not have been.

Keep salary cap during the playoffs, and make ir players still effect salary. Maybe increase the cap a little if possible, to help w injuries and whatnot

I don't pretend to know which players could have actually played when, so I can't say definitively that the LTIR system has been abused, but the convenience of the Tampa Bay situation certainly gave the appearance of abuse. This goes directly to the integrity of the game, so even the appearance of abuse is a problem. Not a "drop everything and don't play another season without a fix" problem, but something that does need to be fixed. I would suggest that the next CBA should add some form of playoff cap. One possibility would be that in each individual playoff game, the combined current-contract cap hit of the players dressed for the game cannot exceed one eighty-second of that year's regular season salary cap. If players coming back from injury put the single-game roster above that threshold, then the team needs to pick a high-salary player to scratch and replace with a lower-salary player, maybe a prospect. That's one idea. There could be others which would work better, but something has to be done.

Florida was over the cap too...

Yes, next question

I also think having teams retain some of a players cap should be looked at

Yeah, amazing how Stone miraculously came back right when the playoffs started. Coincidence? I think not.

All i got from this is that when Barky scored they called it a Vegas goal..🤦🏽

If the player goes on ltir then he can't play in the playoffs. Or something like that. If you want to save the cap hit then the player is unavailable for the playoffs.

I think it should be made that all teams have the same cap otherwise otherwise teams have an advantage. It doesn't seem fair if one team has 8 mil more cap than another that's a big advantage

What if they did something like only players who have played more than 50 games or so on the season can compete in that years playoffs

Big eck fan here

Pretty easy to fix, just add salary cap in playoffs unless the player is still on ltir

Its a team's job to figure out the best way to use EVERY rule to their advantage, its to be expected,

I think the Panthers were bad LTIR violators last season. Ekblad went down injured right before the trade deadline to make way for Giroux.

Very simple. LTIR should mean the player(s) can not practice with the team while on LTIR. If the player(s) need conditioning, then they have to do it at the AHL level with a special waiver exempt. Here is the thing, if the LTIR player(s) can practice then they should be off LTIR. The NHL is not properly monitoring these LTIR situations that teams are following the rule properly.

just make the cap count at all times. only time salary can be removed is for a player who will not return during the regular/post season.

Yes

before watching I'm at about 40 seconds or so right off the bat, have to say any team can do cap circumvention via LTIR they're choosing not to... lots of teams got a guy they cant have on their LT lists (or want to move on from flat out)

The team iced should have to meet the cap. Allow a reasonable percentage increase for the playoffs if needed. It ain't rocket surgery

Completely taken advantage of !

HERE, LTIR players get replaced by an equal number of players. they have that players cap (added to what they have) to work with to pick one player to replace him.HOWEVER what ever is unused from LTIR player then is dropped till said player returns. IF you cant abuse a high cap space for multiple players there is no incentive to abuse it.

If a rule is in place and every team can use it and take advantage of it, I don’t see a problem.

Still haven't heard a good reason why the cap disappears when the playoffs start

It's 2024 and here we are again...yah Vegas looking at you

Yes.

Stamkos was not part of the 18 million over the cap FYI. 9.5m was kucherov and the rest was dead contracts

Players on LTIR must be in the line up 8 to 12 weeks before playoffs. Or if player misses a set amount if time during season he becomes ineligible fir the playoffs

1:33 gonna Assume your talking about the 2020-2021 season bc Nikita never played in that season but the playoffs but your showing his stats in 2021-2022 season

Hard cap thru season and playoffs. its not difficult. over cap? remove/select "over cap value" worth of player/s to sit out for whole playoff run before start of playoffs to reach below cap. seems fair to the club, as assets may of been traded for the new contract which fills in the LTIR. or force players to waivers

NO! -Tampa Bay Lightning

Tampa Bay did the same thing!

If your on ltir at 5 games left in the season then you dont see the playoffs if your team is over the cap then they should be cap compliant if they are not player gets sent to the minors where he is susceptible to waivers

with all rules, people push where there is mush so there will be some who abuse it naturally

'field' a team :P carrying CAP via LTIR is obviously needed, but the team on the ice should still fit in the CAP

I keep saying this in your comments because it's true and I do wish it would change... It's the NHL -- the rules they set they won't enforce. They don't care as long as it makes money. If a team especially in the US is 20 mil over cap who gives a shit does it make money? Does it bring in fans? I can go on.

They are still under cap though so what’s the controversy?

hell yeah

My isles lost out on 2 cups bc of the damn lightning and their expanded cap roster

I don't get how Stone is allowed to play even though he is still clearly injured with his back, Clear cap circumvention when an LTIR player is playing not at 100%

I would rather have a soft cap ceiling and floor, where there is a competitive tax given to teams who go over, which is divided between the rest of the league, as long as you are above the floor.

I think teams retaining salary at the trade deadline should be looked at as well. Its unfair to have a $5M player get traded and the acquiring team on takes only a $1M cap hit. All of player's contract should count towards whichever team they are playing for. Avoid the super teams being formed at the deadline.

Frankly, the salary cap is the problem. But that should be obvious because it was built on a foundation of lies and was a tool to mask poor management of the league by its commissioner and his employer, the owners. Inerestingly, in the 17 years prior to the lockout, 10 different teams won The Cup with five winning one, three winning two, and two winning three. There were nine new franchises during that period and four relocations. In the 17 years followiing the lookout, 11 different teams won The Cup with seven winning one, two winning two, and two winning three. There were two new franchises in the post lockout period with just one relocation. That's if I counted all those up correctly.

They need 2 caps… an absolute cap and hard cap. One cap with LTIR. And the other cap is it doesn’t matter you can’t go over this at all.

There needs to be an independent system to test players that are on LTIR. There is no way this many high end large contract guys all of the sudden are healthy for playoffs game 1 every year.

NHL could just hire their own doctors to do checks on the players that are injured to determine whether they are eligible for the ltir