Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Yeah not sure how you could fine them for cap circumvention now when Alfie actually played out that final season at $1 Million.
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That doesn't stop anything, as the CBA also forbade
attempting to circumvent the cap, even if the attempt was not successful.
What I'm not understanding is this: Alfredsson's contract was a multi-year, 35+ deal. If he had retired, the Senators would therefore still have been on the hook for his entire cap hit. So there was no possibility of circumvention in the sense of actually avoiding any part of the cap hit. In fact, if Alfredsson had retired in 2012, the Senators would have had a total cap hit bigger than the total salary paid:
Code:
Year Salary Cap hit
09-10 $7,000,000 $4,875,000
10-11 7,000,000 4,875,000
11-12 4,500,000 4,875,000
12-13 0 4,875,000
Total 18,500,000 19,500,000
The only thing that could possibly count as circumvention is that part of the cap hit would have been deferred until the 2012-13 season, the year after Alfredsson would have retired. But compare that to Iginla's new contract in Boston, where a similar amount of cap hit (and a much bigger percentage of the contract) can be deferred until the year after the contract expires. Clearly the league doesn't think Iginla's contract is a case of contravention; so it would be hard to argue that Alfredsson's was.