Quote:
Originally Posted by flambers
Yet there are lots articles questioning this type of thing
https://editorinleaf.com/2021/05/17/...afs-tampa-cap/
"The playoffs have no salary cap, so there is nothing from stopping you from sitting $10 million on the LTIR and then adding to your lineup. Both Lightning stars were too injured to play last week, but are fine now that there is no cap to worry about."
"The league needs standards that equalize this, and they need to shut the loophole that saw Nikita Kucherov magically stay injured until his nine million dollar salary didn’t matter. The best team in the NHL is basically playing with a stacked deck and though nothing can be done about it now, the loophole should at least be closed to prevent this situation from happening again in the future." |
See...this is where the whole thing gets lost and the conspiracy falls apart.
Yes, there very much something stopping teams from doing this.
They are called physicians. Physicians that are employed by the league. If they decree a player medically cleared to play, then that player can play. Period.
That's how the whole thing works. Just like teams cannot hide players on LTIR without a doctor declaring a player unfit to play, a team cannot take an injured player and declare them fit to play without the same consent.
So what we would be looking at otherwise is this..
1st....Kucherov was somehow magically the fastest hip surgery healer in modern medicine to be ready to go by mid March (2.5 months when normally it is 4-6) as has been claimed.
2nd...he would have apparently not needed any substantial time to get, at least, up to normal skating speed/strength, and be able to jump right in to the grind of mid season hockey.
3rd...you would need a physician under threat of license revocation to say the player couldn't play when in fact he could. Literally put their career on the line to falsify diagnosis for someone/team to not have their best player on the roster.
4th...you would need the player himself to agree to not be playing when he was ready to play, which flies in the face of all logic when dealing with professional athletes.
5th...the league itself would have to be party to the deception and ignore it for.......some reason?
Honestly, add that all up and then make the conclusion that this was anything but above board.