Buyout + Age 35 Rule

[Jay Seo]

Jul 14, 2016 21:56:11 GMT -5 Corey Scott said:

Jul 14, 2016 21:32:46 GMT -5 Jay Seo said:

IMO, the buyout rule is fine as is.

Cap recapture is different because it was designed to punish teams that artificially lowered a player's cap hit by tacking on additional years at the end of said player's contract. That was legal within the confines of the CBA at the time, but the NHL specifically warned those teams that there would likely be repercussions for those deals in the new (now current) CBA because they were essentially a form of cap circumvention.

But again quit saying the rule isn't there to punish GMs. A rule like this is specifically put in to punish GMs mistakes. It is a punishment, so quit trying to kid yourself. Don't know why you think it is a bad thing to admit it is a punishment anyway, nothing wrong with punishing GMs who make obviously bad decisions (or fairly risky decisions).

It's not the same because the cap recapture penalty doesn't apply when teams can't benefit by front-loading deals. In other words, the cap recapture and buyout penalties punish different things. 

CRP spreads out the cap benefit that a team incurs when a player's salary exceeds the cap hit of a contract like this one, for example, for a player with a $5M AAV:

Contract Year	Salary	AAV	Difference	Net Benefit
1	17M	5M	12M	12M
2	1M	5M	-4M	8M
3	1M	5M	-4M	4M
4	1M	5M	-4M	0 (contract done)

 If that player retires at the end of year 1, the CRP would be 12M / 3 years = 4M per year, to balance out the net benefit that the signing team would incur during year 1.

Let's apply this same scenario to a VHL player age 35+, where both salary and AAV remain constant for the duration of a contract:

Contract Year	Salary	AAV	Difference	Net Benefit
1	5M	5M	0	0
2	5M	5M	0	0
3	5M	5M	0	0
4	5M	5M	0	0 (contract done)

In the second case, the signing team doesn't benefit if the player retires at any point during his contract, so the punishment is that they have to buy out the remainder, keep it until it expires, or incentivize another team to take it off of their hands... which is exactly what happens in the NHL.

The takeaway is that they're different situations and punishments: cap recapture punishes the signing team for benefiting from cap circumvention regardless of which team the player ends up retiring from, whereas the risk associated with 35+ contracts is the same for every team that signs or acquires those contracts. If teams want to assume that risk for their own gain, then it should be their responsibility to deal with the ramifications.  



 


 

[Corey Scott]

Jul 14, 2016 22:31:28 GMT -5 Andre Deblois said:

This rule was originally discussed to deal with the Marc Savards, Tim Thomas' and the Chris Prongers of the world, as, before this rule, those players just kept getting the rating they had from their last full year for the duration of their contracts if they did not play the year before. This was unfair, as, based on age alone, there would a regression in production and therefore ratings, but we could not guess how much lower their rating would be. It was either their previous ratings, or no rating. We chose no rating.

The rules are not made to punish the GM who signed the deal, or the GM who acquires the player... because it is not a punishment.

To the first paragraph. The rules were always written that a player who had not played in the previous year was supposed to get a rating of 55 across the board. This rule was not followed by staff (I know this because I took advantage of having players on my team that I fully knew should have had a 55 rating based off the rule at the time as I had seen other teams doing the same) and I understand why it wasn't, people get missed and it is already a lot of work to follow. This rule appears to have fixed the issue of people being missed though, so +1 for that.

To the second paragraph. Definition of punishment straight from first thing that shows in google: the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense. Penalty being the cap hit you are stuck with and offense being trading for or handing out the contract.

At this point it is clear that people don't feel the need for the rule to be changed, so not point dragging this out. The rule itself is likely to never effect myself I just figured it would slightly improve potential future situations.


edit: And to Boston, straight comparison like that just cannot work when talking NHL vs VHL. I won't go further into this, but there is just too many differences in how money really works to do so.