Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
Not really teams would just find a reason to put other players on IR.
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Not quite as simple as you make it sound. IR doesn't give you any cap relief. Only LTIR does that. A player has to miss a minimum of 10 games to qualify for LTIR, and the NHL has to approve.
WARNING: RANT INCOMING
People need to face up: The Tampa Bay Lightning did not break any rules. They gamed the system by taking the maximum possible benefit from a series of unlikely accidents. But the system was designed that way on purpose. Every year, contenders use their banked cap space to load up on extra talent at the deadline, and every year, those contenders go into the playoffs with a lineup that would not fit under the regular-season cap. Tampa Bay got a bigger boost than usual, but they got it by manipulating the same set of rules in the same spirit.
This whole mess could have been avoided if the cap system had been designed in a sensible way to begin with. Viz.:
Every team has to be cap compliant every day of the season, including playoffs. If you want ‘Black Aces’ in the playoffs, you have to designate them as non-roster players and can only activate them if enough roster players are injured to clear equivalent salaries. (Basically equivalent to sending them down to the AHL, except that there would not be waivers during the playoffs.) Cap room cannot be ‘banked’, and a team can't go over the cap by taking on a big expiring contract at the trade deadline.
The cap is $81,500,000? All right, if at any time, even the Stanley Cup finals, you put $81,500,001 worth of players on the ice, the officials disallow it and give you a choice: ice a cap-compliant roster or forfeit the game.
Of course, this will not happen. Capologists would hate it because they would be out of a job. The media would hate it because it would destroy the ratings value of the trade deadline. GMs of good teams would hate it because it would take away their ability to game the system by going over the cap for playoff runs. GMs of bad teams would hate it because it would wreck the market for them to dump their pending UFAs at the deadline. The fans would hate it because, frankly, it would be fair, and they would lose both the hope that the Good Guys might take advantage of the rules and the righteous anger when the Bad Guys do.
The system is borked, but we appear to be stuck with it.
/RANT