Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
But Kovalchuk's contract broke no rule. That's back to the original comment being made before I commented at all on Iginla.
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Kovalchuk's contract did not break a bright line rule, but the language does allow for the commissioner to subjectively decide that a deal is circumvention. In the Kovaclhuk case, it was already well known that those cheat years at the back end of a deal were problematic, and that they were widely considered circumvention. The Devils didn't just inch forward the way other teams had been doing, they did a triple jump past that line, and the league finally felt it had to stop this.
In Iginla's case, the argument for this being circumvention is not as well defined as that was. My interpretation of the clauses is that it is practically written to encourage these kinds of deals. The union had to know that older players would be severely limited by the cap system, and allowed for a way for them to still get paid. The owners limited it by allowing for only 35+ players on one-year deals or those who missed significant time to injury to qualify. So while this may be a technical circumvention, it seems to be one built into the system and severely limited.