Running NHL 2023-24 regular season thread

Sorry, but... WHAT?

 

I would love to hear how anybody believes it’s not. Hard capped league that keeps franchises alive off the backs of big markets.

 

Bettman is not manipulating anything. It’s in the CBA, any team can take advantage of this.

 

Verbeek said he'd love to be able to implement this in a couple of years, but he's pretty sure it'll be gone by then.

It's a bad rule, man, bad f**kin' rule.

 

I’m sure it will be gone. Bettman is a vindictive petty little man and hates to be made to look bad. Look what he did with cap recapture penalties on contracts the league allowed at the time.

I also don’t think people truly understand how LTIR works. You don’t immediately get cap relief by putting a player on LTIR, much more to it than that.

 

I think there are two types of LTIR. I know that the Habs wanted to be under the cap with Carey Price this year and then place him on LTIR for more relief/flexibility. Placing him on LTIR before the season would have a different impact. It’s also why they got rid of Weber, because there is such a thing as too much LTIR.

I follow the NHL reasonably well and the cap is generally very rigid but then weirdly permissive as well.

 

You’re going to have to explain how keeping the salary cap in effect causes teams to be “hamstrung by injuries.”

I’d especially like to know how a rule that requires teams to use a 20-man roster that is under the salary cap, which can change from game to game, causes teams to be “hamstrung by injuries.”

 

Most teams that are competitive are right up against a cap that hasn’t gone up in years. If someone goes out for a lengthy period of time I would like to see teams be able to replace them. Simple.

I also hate hard caps and wish there was a luxury tax instead. Obviously never going to happen so I like when smart teams exploit loopholes.

 

That's what I meant by an addendum to the addendum's addendum. There is always some subsection of Rule 23.5(c) that lets teams get away with stuff.

Anyway, enough of trying to figure out the NHL rules, etc.

 

OK. So it’s the cap you’re against, not changing the cap rules for the playoffs.

Well, I won’t address that (because I am not familiar with the intricacies of the NHL cap), but I will say if the cap is in effect during the regular season it should also be in effect for the playoffs.

 

I had no idea of this rule, but in the Minnesota-Nashville game, the Wild scored with the goalie intentionally pulled in OT. Had Nashville scored the empty netter to win, the Wild would have forfeited the OT point earned at the end of regulation. Had no clue that was a thing.

 

It would look really bad if/when it backfires and I'm not saying teams should always do it given the risk of losing the point . . . but if you have really high-end skill guys like, say, Colorado, and they're all fresh for a shift, getting a 4-on-3 advantage is absolutely worth considering. You are pretty much guaranteed to get a grade A scoring chance if you're patient enough.