[News] Avs place Brooks Orpik on waivers for buyout purposes

[sureLoss]

per Ryan Rishaug

[TheScorpion]

The floodgates have opened.

[spuzzum]

Why not just hold on to him for the remaining year instead of impacting the cap for two seasons? Even if he's slow and useless, he still should be considered a serviceable dman. Bizarre unless they need the room for a Tavares run.

[FlamesFanTrev]

Originally Posted by spuzzum

Why not just hold on to him for the remaining year instead of impacting the cap for two seasons? Even if he's slow and useless, he still should be considered a serviceable dman. Bizarre unless they need the room for a Tavares run.

Washington said yesterday they would take him back if he was bought out by the Avs. For those of you thinking they got a deal on Grubauer for a 2nd, the orpik buyout was part of the cost. Smells like cap circumvention to me

[spuzzum]

Trade him to the Oilers for Nuge. Edmonton is dumb even to do it and the fan base would drink the kool-aid of obtaining a Stanley Cup Champion Dman

[DoubleK]

I don't understand how this is allowed. He actually gets a raise from the team that had him yet they get a more cap space?

That's not right.

[sureLoss]

It doesn't pass the CBA circumvention smell test.

While not explicitly forbidden by the CBA, you can make the argument that violates the CBA in 1 of 2 ways:

1. Renegotiating a contract. According to the CBA players contracts cannot be re-negotiated. By having the Avs buyout the contract and then re-signing Orpik to a lower cap hit contract, the Caps are effectively re-negotiating Orpik's contract.

2. Salary Retention rules. You could argue that the Avs buyout followed by re-signing Orpik to a lower cap hit contract is effectively a retained salary transaction, where the Avs acquired Orpik and are effectively trading him back at a retained salary. The CBA does not allow a team to retain salary and trade back a player to the original team until 1 calendar year has passed from the date of the trade.



The question is does the NHL try to stop this now, or let this problem fester like backloaded 12+ year contracts in the previous CBA.

Or the even bigger question, does the NHL even care?

[btimbit]

Curious about that too. If he just comes back to the Caps now for less I'd say that's easily cap circumvention

[DoubleK]

Thanks SureLoss.

It will be interesting to see if he re-signs with the Caps and what, if anything, the NHL does about it.