Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMike
Why can’t the NHL just keep the salary cap limit for the playoffs?
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The salary cap limit actually is in effect for the playoffs – technically: it says so in the CBA. But because of the screwy way the cap is calculated from day to day, it's impossible to go over the cap in the playoffs.
No, I'm serious. Each day of the regular season, a team is deemed to pay its players 1/186 (or whatever number) of their total cap hit for the year. You're compliant as long as you have enough of your $81.5 million (or whatever number) left to pay your players for the remaining days of the season. On the first day of the season, you are dividing your money available by 186. On the last day, you are dividing by 1.
The day the playoffs begin, all the salaries have already been paid and you are dividing by zero. Your only restriction is the list of playoff-eligible players in your system, whom you had to fit under the cap at some point during the year.
The geniuses who negotiated this system apparently never heard that dividing by zero is a no-no in basic arithmetic. That is where the system is screwed up.
What would make sense is a system where you have to be under the cap each and every day of the season and nothing is banked. If the cap is $81.5 million, then on any given day you can't have more than $81.5 million in cap hits on your active roster. No more BS about saving up so you can suddenly have millions of extra cap room at the trade deadline. And definitely, no more BS about having as much cap hit as you like in the playoffs because the formula contains a divide-by-zero error.
Of course, this would be fiercely resisted by everyone in the game. The media want the spectacle of big names moving at the deadline. GMs want the extra wiggle room to bury their mistakes. Capologists want to keep their jobs, which otherwise would be so simple that a chimp with a calculator could do them.
To quote one of my favourite lines from ‘Yes, Prime Minister’:
‘It's actually a very good idea. It simply mustn't happen.’