Tanev's good enough for many teams to pay up north of $3M as a free agent... He's not negative value.

Has nothing to do with his value. If he wanted to stay in Vancouver and still get paid simultaneously helping the Nucks stay cap compliant if the Boeser contract is more then they expected, he could.

I guess he "could" but if this becomes commonplace the NHL would prevent signing players the team has bought out almost immediately.

How? The NHL would file a grievance and a arbitrator would have to decide. Since Each one of these guys was very similar in contract to Stone, Not sure how they could nix it and allow the others to remain. The Kovalchuk contract was nixed because it went so far beyond the previous contracts that it set a total precedence. Doing the above would be almost identical to what Calgary just did.

I meant that if the thing that Calgary did becomes commonplace, I don't see NHL approving it for very long. It's cap circumventing and they don't really like it. I frankly have never seen this done.

The thing is once you've bought him out (and taken away a decent chunk of his contract) he is free to sign with anyone else who will likely pay him more.

The "plan" could be to resign him for 700k but he'd be nuts to not shop his talent around and he'd likely sign like a 14 million 4 year deal (3.5 m aav) or something somewhere else

I don't think it'll really catch on, and it almost certainly wouldn't have worked if the Canucks had tried this with Tanev this year. Prior to a buyout, the player has to be offered on unconditional waivers, which in most buyouts is no problem because the player sucks and no one would want to claim him or his bad contract, but guys like Tanev and Soderberg (another AGM post like this used him) are good enough players in their own right that at least one team would probably make a claim. In their cases, this amounts to just giving away a rental UFA for free instead of getting something for them, which is the opposite of good asset management. This will only work on guys that your front office is higher on than anyone else, which, considering that's how most bad free agent deals get signed in the first place, doesn't bode well for the future of your team.

They had a chance to stop this right now and didn't. The reason they put a stop to the Kovalchuk style contracts was because it was huge dollars and MAJOR cap circumvention. It was getting out of hand because of the huge dollar amounts, it made waves in the sports community.

What CGY did isn't a huge amount of cap and probably won't make the headlines anywhere. The NHL doesn't want bad publicity first and foremost. This isn't a big enough deal to get them to have to go through the paperwork and media spotlight to nix.

I guarantee they will make amendments to the CBA in order to close this loophole in the future or at the very least make it not so "easy" so that teams can't exploit it.

So why didn't Stone sign elsewhere? he took league minimum from a team that bought him out because he was no longer good enough to start with them anymore.

The answer? Its easy. Stone loses out on a small amount of money but doesn't have to move his family to a new city. Doesn't have to fight for a new spot on a new team. He's already comfortable with the team he's on and knows them well enough. He took a 12% pay cut to not have to change anything in his life for an additional year. You say "I wouldn't do that". He clearly was ok with this.

Yeah I used Tanev/Soderberg but I guess in hindsight I should't have. It seems my pont was flying over peoples heads a little. My goal wasn't to say they suck so they should be bought out. It was just to show if a player of those guys contract amount and term were bought out, what the cap situation would look like.

I think it's because he wasnt good enough to get more elsewhere. Tanev is. But that's just a guess at the market. I may be wrong

Also notice stone didn't resign with Calgary for a couple months. I suspect he was shoppi g his services around elsewhere and didn't get a buyer.

Yeah see above comment. my goal wasn't to single out Tanev or anything. Just showing the advantage a team could use with a player like Stone's contract. Wasn't trying to say Tanev should be bought out.

He was bought out in August, just over a month ago. But we're splitting hairs here. The point is if a player is bought out it usually means he's not good enough for most teams. Obviously some exclusions to the rule are there but we're talking about the players who are barely roster players to start with. Not players who are good enough to get a contract somewhere else and can easily be snatched up. Then their is way more enticement for a player to play elsewhere.


In Stone's case, (Im assuming a scenario like this could have happened), Treliving could have straight up told him, he's buying him out but not cause he doesn't still want him but only because they really need that extra cap. The player has no say in being bought out so he has to go with it but usually the team wants to part with that player anymore. In this case, the team is only using the buy out as a way to clear up some extra cap at small fraction of the players expense. Yeah Stone loses out on some money but its not like he has a choice in the matter and this way he doesn't have to move his family to another city and he's still getting a large part of his salary that was owed to him before being bought out. 400K of 3.5M isn't enough to go from riches to rags. he'll still be able to live out the remaining year of his previous contract with any major changes and the team is able to sign a player like Tkachuk finally without going over the cap.

No tea no shade no pink lemonade man, wasn't trying to blow up your spot or anything

Am I old because i don't understand the first part of that sentence?

Yeah its all good, I should have been more clear and used a different player. My point would have been better received I think.

I disagree with your assertion that "if a player is bought out it usually means he's not good enough for most teams"

What it means is that a player isn't good enough for his contract. Think about Vinny Lecavalier, Brad Richards, Vinny Prospal, etc.

There are often good players who just don't live up to their contract. They would still be quite wanted on cheaper value deals. And that's where the abuse issue is settled. A 3 million dollar player on a 6 million dollar contract won't be wanted. But once he's bought out he doesn't necessarily want to stay. Numerous teams will be want to sign him for 700k-3 million

Could your scenario happen? Sure! But the team has no control to stop the player from going elsewhere.

If your going to quote someone, please don't quote it out of context. This is what i said:

The point is if a player is bought out it usually means he's not good enough for most teams. Obviously some exclusions to the rule are there but we're talking about the players who are barely roster players to start with.

I purposefully phrased it the way I did precisely so the good enough players that find another team quite easily are excluded from my point.

As for your last sentence, where have I mentioned once that a team would be able to stop a player from going anywhere? Not sure but it seems you are misunderstanding the premise here.

The point is that a player like Stone, probably not going to be getting a >1M contract from anyone in the league after being bought out has the option to essentially stay with the team and not have to find another city to play in, move his family, etc and still get to play with the team he originally signed with, at a slight discount to his previous contract. Since a player has no ability to stop a buyout, he has to accept it. The difference here is that the team is not buying out the player to "get rid of him", simply to maneuver cap space around while keeping the player. Yes the player takes a hit in salary but its not like he has a choice (Unless he thinks he can get more money elsewhere - if this is the case then the scenario won't work). This making the most of a crappy situation in which everyone benefits in one way or another from a situation where normally everyone loses.