Quote:
Originally Posted by saillias
Just in the sense that it's something that's never happened ever yet they keep talking about it.
Every year we hear about the cap squeeze, all these teams so tight to the cap, yet they find a way to make it work without sending Calgary 1st round picks.
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It has happened before, to a lesser extent. Beside that minor point, this exact situation has never happened before in the NHL, which is why some think the price may be going waaaaay up for these teams to get out of their mistakes. Previously teams could bury contracts in the minors, now that is gone. Compliance buyouts saved teams for the last couple summers, but now those are gone too. Regular buyouts don't really save teams that much money, especially on these back diving contracts. The cap was supposed to go up... but oops, the Canadian dollar dropped like a rock over the last couple months and now the cap is probably going down.
The Kings aren't the only team in trouble. Take a look at Chicago's situation next year... they have 4M to sign at least 8 players including giving a raise to Saad. And that's if the cap stays the same. If it drops my a million or two, they're even more screwed. Boston isn't in much better shape, and there are half a dozen other teams that are going to have some tough decisions to make as well.
There are only a couple teams with cap space and budget to take on some of these bad contracts, and I'm glad the Flames are one of them.