By Rob Ficiur

Sports fans will remember the NHL Salary Cap as the most exciting sport in the summer of 2010.  With the Toronto Blue Jays being a .500 club (again) they bring no national enthusiasm.  We watch Tiger Woods not win the major tournaments, but still be the top money leader in the PGA, so not much drama there.  The CFL season is just starting up, the drama of any league peaks during the playoff run.

However the NHL salary cap has made so much news that hockey fans are busier during “Salary Cap Season” more exciting and intense than anything else going on.

1.  Contract Void for Cheating the Salary Cap:  Those weren’t the exact words the NHL used when it voided Ilya Kovalchuk’ s 17 year $102 million dollar contract with the New Jersey Devils.  The NHL ruled that the contract, which runs until the Russian Sniper is 44 years old, circumvents the salary cap.  The salary cap applies the average salary of the contract to the team’s cap hit that year.  The last four years of the Kovalchuk contract he was scheduled to make 500,000 around the league minimum.  If the player retired and voided the last four years of the contract, the team would not include his salary in their cap hit.

This will likely be argued by lawyers for weeks or months.  However in recent years the NHL has allowed other players to sign long term contracts that pay less in the final years.  The Kovalchuk contract has seven “dead” years, where he would make $1 million or less.  Does the team expect the Russian superstar to play at near “minimum wage for seven years?  He will probably retire, meaning there would be no salary cap hit for the team.

Once a rule is put in place, it is the nature of some people to find a loophole to get around it.  It may take the NHL 17 years to get this figured out right.

2.  The Stanley Cup champion Chicago Black Hawks have traded away key players so they can keep within the salary cap.  Traded are Andrew Ladd, Kris Versteeg, Dustin Byfuglien, Brent Sope and Ben Eger.  These are solid second and third line support players.  They aren’t the stars that won the Stanley Cup, they are the support players who came through with key plays when needed.  Before the playoffs started everyone knew that  the Black Hawks would have to make some trades because of big raises coming to their elite players.  No team has repeated as Stanley Cup champions since the 1997 and 1998 Red Wings.  The salary cap trades of the Black Hawks makes a repeat seem even less likely.

3.  The Calgary Flames made very little noise this summer because of the salary cap.  At this point the Flames team salary is at 51.3 million.  (see nhlnumbers.com)  The salary cap for the coming year is 59.4 million.  However the Flames still have defensmen Ian White going to arbitration.  His new salary around 2.5 million will give the team only 7 million left in cap space.  Two years ago the Flames played a few games with less than the normal 18 skaters because the team was over the salary cap.  Once White goes to arbitration the team will have about $20 million tied up in their top five defensmen.   The Flames should be looking to trade / give away one or two defesemen so that they have the flexibility to sign or trade another forward.

The Edmonton Oilers made big news this week, without reference to the salary cap.  Owner Daryl Katz said that the team cannot stay in Edmonton unless they have a new arena and a share in the building revenue.  Some city concilmen did not like the idea of public dollars being spent on a hockey arena for a privately owned professional sports team.  The same argument took place in Winnipeg a decade or so back and the politicians stood their ground…they did not build a new arena.  With no new arena the Winnipeg Jets relocated to Phoenix.  After that the city built a new arena.  If  Mr. Katz doesn’t get what he wants / needs, will he move his team to Winnipeg?  The Winnipeg Oilers doesn’t sound like a real hockey team.