I’m not sure what he’s talking about...everywhere I have looked Kessel has always been a $2.2M cap hit. These bonus clauses are really a great thing for the owners since 90% of rookies never come close to attaining their bonuses. It makes the owners look like they are spending alot when they really aren’t. The salary cap is a joke anyway. If you are over the cap you can just send guys to the minors to get under it. Basically you can still spend as much as you want but you might have a bunch of NHL guys playing in the AHL for you.

Posted by kevin from boston on 09/17/08 at 09:32 AM ET

Not so, if a player has a big enough contract that you want to send them to the minors to get under the cap, they probably have a 1 way contract. If that is the case, then they have to go through waivers and can be claimed by other NHL teams, like what is going on with Schneider right now. If they clear waivers, than yes, they can basically just “spend as much as you want but you might have a bunch of NHL guys playing in the AHL for you.”

Posted by Kevin from Pittsburgh on 09/17/08 at 09:39 AM ET

So like I said the cap is a hoax. They should just go back to the old format. The idea of a salary floor is really stupid and will hurt alot of teams. Unless of course they give all their rookies huge bonus numbers to get to the salary floor. It’s all a sham and we missed a whole season for this? Like everything else the lockout was all about egos...so somebody could say “I won”....if this case it was the midget.

Posted by kevin from boston on 09/17/08 at 10:33 AM ET

Schneider’s entire contract would still count against the cap even if he played in the minors. To say the least, the CBA is complicated…

Posted by Itlan on 09/17/08 at 04:10 PM ET

I don’t know about that. NJ had guys like McGillis playing in Albany all year making $3M so they would be “under” the cap. Same with the Rangers and Kaparaitis. They still paid them but they weren’t on the roster so they were considered under the cap. This is why they always say no team will go over the cap because in the worst case scenario you can always send some overpaid player to the minors and voila you are under the cap. It’s all a sham in my opinion but no greedy owner would like to pay a guy $3m to play in Wilkes Barre so I guess it works to some extent.

Posted by kevin from boston on 09/17/08 at 04:26 PM ET

Kevin, clubs can’t get out of the contracts signed with players older than 35 years. If they are bought out, sent to minors or retire, their full salary still counts against salary cap. Players who were sent to minors and removed from cap were younger than 35 when they signed.

As for bonus clauses, in every year when it is guaranteed that the CBA would exist the following year, certain bonuses (for entry-level deals and 35 or older players on 1-year contracts) can be transferred to the next year’s cap, up to 7.5% of the maximum cap value. Since union has right to get out of the CBA after this season, all the bonuses have to be included in this year’s cap. Otherwise, clubs could have had up to slightly over 4.25 M$ in (usually unattainable) bonuses on top of the cap space.

Posted by Davor from Zagreb (Croatia) on 09/18/08 at 03:26 AM ET