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Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
I don’t think it quite works like that…
Tampa delayed Kucherov getting his surgery until later in the summer, yes. But they also knew what they had in Kucherov - how he fit, what his role was etc.
And they knew the nature of the injury and probable recovery time.
And they had a shortened season because of the pandemic.
Vegas doesn’t have that perfect storm in their favour. They can probably get away with saying Eichel has suffered setbacks in his recovery if they need to keep him on LTIR all year - it’s a neck injury, after all.
But it’s very likely they can’t drag this out all year, when recovery time is allegedly 2-3 months. Where are they magicking up the other 2.5?
Even if they manage to ghost the cap for an extra three months, then they’re Asking a guy who hasn’t played hockey in close to two years to make his debut with a new team in the playoffs. Which represents an entirely different level of physical play that Eichel has simply never experienced. And he’s that is the first time he’s going to test his surgically repaired neck? While having no time to build rapport with his line mates?
So if Vegas gets him, it means they have to clear Major salary - which nobody is going to be in a hurry to help them with, because they ####ed everyone they could during expansion. They’ll have to give away whoever’s left and good on their roster, Marchessault for example, for Pennies on the dollar.
Or pay with draft picks to make guys go away, which further prevents them from adding help they likely need to even make the playoffs in the first place.
I suppose there’s a lot to be said for “do it and figure it out later”, but they really don’t seem to be in a great position to make this work, much as they’d like to.
If they could, they would have done it by now, since Buffalo is so gaga over Krebs.
I could be thoroughly misreading the situation, or not understand the intricacies of LTIR - in fact, the second part is definitely true.
But I still get the sense we’re in this to win it, and all these Vegas rumours are Buffalo’s attempt to get us to add more.
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It’s a spine injury so the recovery time is extremely fluid. Especially since he’s doing a procedure that no pro hockey player has done… both he and Vegas will be able to argue on the side of caution. All it will take is him saying he’s not back to 100% health and not back to “gameshape”. Vegas management will just say they don’t want to take any risks with his injury. He will get 2-3 months of practicing with the team… running drills and scrimmages as their #1 centre. It won’t take much for him to find his role… elite players find it quickly usually. Then, on day 1 of the playoffs, he’ll be activated. The league will do absolutely nothing about it.
It’s unlikely he is ready for the Olympics at this point anyways so Vegas will probably convince him to sit as long as possible. He’s a new superstar coming to a very successful franchise that will no doubt pay a lot to acquire him… that’s a ton of pressure on him. If Vegas management pressures him even more by asking him to wait to declare himself ready to come back until it works for them cap-wise, I think he’ll do just that. Especially if it means their team gets to remain mostly intact for the playoffs. Doubt eichel wants to be known as the guy that broke up his new team cause he came back too early.
How often has the league stepped in to stop any signings or trades that “circumvented” the intentions of the salary cap? Honestly. They especially won’t step in on this trade since there has been pressure from the NHLPA and the player himself to get this done for so long.
Vegas will deal with any later consequences in the offseason if it means that on day 1 of the playoffs they get to have eichel added to their roster that still has most of their top players… a roster that will no doubt be way over the cap. As far as getting him up to speed… they could look at round one for breaking him in. They’ve made it through the first round several times now without eichel. They can likely do that while getting eichel acclimatized to playing again (especially after practicing for 2-3 months).
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