Farewell to a legend

"Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer" (smallbear94) 10/02/2018 at 16:10 • Filed to: None

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Wacko > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 10/02/2018 at 16:50

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Crap i’m older than him..

Looks like only a few players are older than I am now,

Matt Cullen, Chara, Hossa, and Luongo by 5 days.

I’m older than 98% of hockey players

boredalways > Wacko 10/02/2018 at 17:31

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I thought Hossa officially retired?

Wacko > boredalways 10/02/2018 at 18:13

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Then only 3 are older than me, i’m getting older by the minute here...

I wasn't sure about him.  

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > boredalways 10/03/2018 at 08:27

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Hossa has a condition* that keeps him out of the lineup. If he straight-up retired, he wouldn’t get the rest of his money and the Blackhawks would be screwed because they’d get hit with cap recapture penalties, even though the Coyotes have now taken on his contract.

All told, the Blackhawks saved themselves $17.1m of cap space over his 8 years actually playing. If he had retired, not only would they not have Hossa playing for them, but they would have had $4.275m against the cap for the next 4 years because they stretched his contract to 12 years and he only played 8. If he retired this year, because he was technically with the Hawks still, their cap savings would only be $12.825m over 9 years. However they’d still have $4.292m stuck against the cap for 3 years.

Now, however, since he’s been traded to the Coyotes the Hawks would be totally screwed should he retire . Once the trade went through the cap savings stopped counting down for Chicago, the final number for them is $12.875m in space saved. Should he decide to retire at any point in the next 3 years (he won’t) the Hawks are on the hook for $12.875 against the cap divided by whatever time he has left. If it was at the start of his last contracted season, the whole hit would come at once and the Hawks would pretty much have to tear their team apart to make it fit.

*Maybe, maybe not. His “condition” only became bad enough for him not to play once his actual salary dipped to $1m/yr... The league seems satisfied that it’s genuine, so I guess he could have been playing through it and it finally got too much to play through, though I think a more likely answer is that with the condition worsening combined with his salary dropping it just wasn’t worth it to him to keep playing through it. So yeah, essentially retirement, but in a way that keeps him or IR rather than completely fucking the Hawks cap situation.

Another interesting case is Shea Weber. Nashville saved ~$ 24.5m over his current contract while he was playing for them because they stretched it to 14 years. If he retires at 40, they have to swallow the whole thing in one year.