Tag Archives: Evgeni Malkin

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Dominic Tiano: Circumventing the NHL Salary Cap- If It Walks Like A Duck…

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Dominic Tiano, the resident expert on most matters CBA-related, provides a quick primer on ways that teams are taking advantage of the existing framework to potentially manipulate the salary cap. You’ve probably seen the chatter on Twitter and social media in general, but “The Dom” breaks it down for the rest of us in a manner that’s easy to understand and provides some ideas to keep this from becoming a growing trend league-wide. -KL

What do Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Freddie Andersen, Michael Kempny and Evgeni Malkin have in common?

All have missed significant time (in Kucherov’s case, the entire season) which allowed their teams to exceed the NHL salary cap with the Long-Term Injury Exemption known as LTIR.

The problem is, what their respective teams have done does not break any NHL rules. It’s also allowed those teams to go out on trade deadline and make improvements to their rosters in their quest for the Stanley Cup.

And now, they are all set to return at some point in these playoffs because there is no salary cap in the playoffs.

It gets even stranger.

Alex Steen of the St Louis Blues officially announced his retirement on December 17, 2020 yet the Blues used his entire cap hit of $5,750,000 (and then some) on LTIR.

While there has to be some mechanism in place that allows a team to replace a player who is out with a bona-fide long term injury, the NHL and the NHLPA need to sit down and take a look at what some teams are doing, although the latter may not want a change as it puts more money in the player’s pockets.

How would you feel if the Boston Bruins lost Patrice Bergeron for a season and couldn’t replace him because there was no LTIR?

But the NHLPA may want to look a little closer. You need not go back any further then the 2019-20 season when the Ottawa Senators had a whopping $15 million plus tied up in players on LTIR. Marian Gaborik, Ryan Callahan and Clarke MacArthur never played a game and spent the entire 186 days of the NHL season on LTIR. And even though the Sens never used a penny of that LTIR, what did it accomplish? It got them to the cap floor without spending a penny of Eugene Melnyk’s money because they were paid by insurance. That kept money out of other player’s pockets.

If you could ask any General Manager how they feel about the situation, I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority have no issue with it because they know one day, it could be them that need to use that avenue.

But ask the now 32 team owners and you would get a different response because it now actually involves dollars. And none may be more vocal than Chairman of the Board and Bruins Owner Jeremy Jacobs who was one of the leaders of bringing in a salary cap. And he carries a lot of weight.

Chris Johnston of Sportsnet said on a Hockey Night in Canada Broadcast that the League is saying “we’re going to watch you closely.”

Well Gary Bettman, the time has come. The playoffs are here.

I’m not one to defend Bettman and his right-hand man Bill Daly but in fairness, they have done a marvelous job along with the NHLPA and the players to make sure the Stanley Cup was awarded last season and we had some sort of season this year.

And their main concern has been to make sure that we get through the season and that we have a normal season next year. They’ve also had to negotiate two massive (in hockey’s case) American Television contracts.

Again Mr. Bettman, the time has come.

There are no easy fixes, but I will take a stab at it.

This is the way The Dom would rectify it:

1- Even though there is no salary cap in the playoffs, rosters must be cap compliant. You could also set an arbitrary cap like the offseason cap. Make it so teams could go over by 5% to carry their “black aces”.

2- If a player misses an entire season due to being on LTIR, then he is not eligible for the playoffs.

3- You can not trade a player who is on LTIR. Personally, I’ve never understood this. If you can’t buyout a player who is injured, why should you be allowed to trade him?

4- If a player officially retires, there should be no LTIR associated with him.

5- If a player is deemed to have a bona-fide injury and is going to miss 10 games or 24 days (the minimum required to go on LTIR), then the LTIR space allowed is based on the team’s “new” salary cap on the day of the injury. Right now, a team is allowed to make recalls to get as close as possible to the salary cap to maximize LTIR.

Example: With a salary cap of $81.5 million, if a team has a cap hit of $80 million, they can recall player(s) making up to $1.5 million to get to the upper limit. If a player with a $5 million cap hit goes on LTIR, they can then exceed the cap to $86.5 million. Under my scenario, the team’s cap hit on the day of the injury would be used, or $80 million making their new “upper limit” $85 million.

If you have any ideas, post them in the comments below!

Enjoy the Stanley Cup Playoffs!

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Jarome Iginla the newest Bruin elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame

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IginlaHHOF

(Image courtesy of the Boston Bruins)

The Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2020 was announced today and to no one’s surprise Jarome Iginla was one of the inductees as a first-ballot entry.

The one-time Boston Bruins 30-goal scoring forward and member of the 2013-14 President’s Trophy-winning squad joins Marian Hossa Doug Wilson, Kevin Lowe, Kim St-Pierre and Ken Holland as the individuals whose selections were announced today.

Iginla, who spent the bulk of his storied career with the Calgary Flames, could have been a Bruin for a little longer, as he was apparently traded to the team just before the 2013 trade deadline, but reportedly nixed the deal until the Pittsburgh Penguins put together an offer that he accepted. It was a bit of a crazy story, and the reality will always be known only to the primary players- Peter Chiarelli as then-B’s GM, Flames GM Jay Feaster and Iginla himself.

As you know, the Iginla-less 2013 Bruins instead acquired Jaromir Jagr from Dallas at the deadline and went on a run to the Stanley Cup final, coming up short in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks. Ironically enough, Iginla, whose trade to the Penguins at the time was widely hailed as the move that was sure to put the Pittsburgh offensive powerhouse of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin over the top, watched as the B’s swept the Penguins in four games of the Eastern Conference final. His output in the series…to quote the incomparable Dean Wormer from Animal House…Zero. Point. Zero.

A few months later, Iginla was wearing similar colors but traded the Penguin in for a spoked-B when he signed as a free agent.

I won’t lie- I was floored by the move. He was the one unrestricted free agent I was confident the B’s wouldn’t pursue after the trade fiasco, but Chiarelli and Co. torpedoed my ego and got him on a fun-now/pay-later contract that had a low base but easily attainable bonuses.

Iginla went out and hit just about every one of them, boosting his team-friendly deal of $1.8M in 2013-14 to another $4.2M in bonuses applied to Boston’s 2014-15 cap number for a total of $6M for his 30 goals and 61 points at age 36.  The B’s could only watch helplessly as they landed in cap hell and Iginla signed an un-matchable $15.9M three-year contract with the Colorado Avalanche in 2014. His production steadily declined in all three years, and he finished out his NHL career with a late-season trade to the L.A. Kings in 2017.

“Iggy” is deserving of his place in the HHOF. He was a power forward who was among a new generation of players that took the mantle from Cam Neely, retired just one month before Iginla began his NHL career with the Flames as a 19-year-old rookie.

Originally drafted by the Dallas Stars in the first round (11th overall) of the 1995 NHL Entry Draft out of the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers after winning the 1994 and 1995 Memorial Cups. He had a dominant season in 1995-96, racking up 136 points, but was dealt to the Flames mid-season in a trade that sent former multiple 50-goal guy Joe Nieuwendyk to Big D. It was the proverbial trade that helps both teams- Nieuwendyk was a member of the Stars’ 1999 Stanley Cup championship team, and Iginla became Calgary’s franchise player.

Iginla was a member of Canada’s Olympic teams in 2002, 2006 and 2010, winning gold medals in 2002 and 2010.

The closest Iginla came to an NHL championship was in his prime during the 2004 playoffs when the Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning battled to the seventh game of a hard-fought series, but fell short. After a 41-goal season (he shared a second Richard Trophy with Ilya Kovalchuk and Rick Nash), Iginla tallied 13 goals and 22 points in 26 playoff games that spring. He would not get out of the first round for the remaining four playoffs of his Flames career.

In 1554 career games, Iginla scored 625 goals and 1300 points. He was one of the faces of the NHL during his tenure. When he won the Art Ross and Maurice Rocket Richard Trophy in 2002, he was the first black player to win those major awards in the NHL.

Iginla was one of the very best in the game, and he was extremely popular during his one season in Boston. If only GM Harry Sinden had a crystal ball in his possession, the B’s could have drafted Iginla with the 9th selection in 1995 over defenseman Kyle McLaren, but at least fans can claim him as one of their own, albeit for a short period of time.

As the old saying goes, better late than never.

Congratulations Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla– HHOF Class of 2020.

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Friday Flashback: Bruins 2006 Draft

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Here’s a comprehensive look at the 2006 Boston Bruins draft, which transformed the franchise in a single weekend of picks and one major trade. Other than 1979, there isn’t a more impactful single draft in team history, though 1980 was quite strong, along with 2014 more recently. Here you go- KL

Brad_Marchand

(Photo courtesy of Alison M. Foley)

The Boston Bruins franchise was in disarray at the conclusion of the 2005-06 hockey season and faced a crucial crossroads leading up to the entry draft being in Vancouver that June.

A year that began with promise with the return of NHL hockey after a lockout cancelled the 2004-05 big league campaign descended into chaos and despair when a series of big-money free agent signings went bust (Alexei Zhamnov, Brian Leetch, Dave Scatchard) and franchise face Joe Thornton was traded to San Jose before December for the kind of return that ultimately sealed Mike O’Connell’s (Cohasset, Mass.) fate as Bruins GM. O’Connell’s departure opened the door for one-time Harvard hockey captain Peter Chiarelli’s ascension as the B’s new chief of management and operations, but as the assistant GM of the Ottawa Senators, the job of riding herd over Boston’s 2006 draft and early phases of free agency fell to O’Connell’s interim replacement, Jeff Gorton.

 Thanks to a win by the Columbus Blue Jackets on the final day of the 2005-06 regular season, the Bruins slid into the fifth overall draft position (not affected by the draft lottery, won by St. Louis).  Two points are what separated the B’s from Phil Kessel and someone else (Derick Brassard went one selection later at sixth overall). Kessel may no longer be with the Bruins, but his impact will likely be felt in the years to come, even if the jury is still out on the players received from Toronto and then Dallas last summer.

The B’s former chief amateur scout and current director of player personnel, Scott Bradley, called 2006 a “historic” draft year and critical moment for the rebuilding of the once proud franchise’s sagging fortunes. Little did Bradley know at the time that his words would prove to be prophetic, and that just five years later, the club would reverse direction from the road to ruin to Stanley Cup glory in the very city the draft occurred, defeating the Vancouver Canucks in an epic seven-game championship series.

Boston’s selections in the second and third rounds were instrumental in the 2011 Stanley Cup championship and run to the 2013 Stanley Cup final: Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand, while No. 1 goaltender Tuukka Rask’s history is inextricably linked to the 2006 draft as well. Although Lucic was traded five years ago, Marchand has ascended to NHL superstardom, as has Rask, who could be in line to collect the second Vezina Trophy of his career after a shortened 2019-20 season. Marchand and Rask helped lead the B’s to within one win of the 2019 Stanley Cup championship, though they fell short at home to the St. Louis Blues.

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, Boston’s 2006 draft is still making a direct and indirect impact on the team’s fortunes.

Continue reading →

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Sunday Flashback: 2013 B’s-Pens playoff column “Sweep dreams will end the Steel City nightmare”

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An old friend recently reminded me of a column I wrote in 2013, after the Boston Bruins had taken a 3-0 series lead over Sidney Crosby and the vaunted Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference final (you remember- the guys who were anointed Stanley Cup champs when they scooped Boston on Jarome Iginla at the trade deadline?) Alas, the B’s were unable to close the deal against the Chicago Blackhawks, who earned their second of three rings between 2010-15 against the Black & Gold, but he asked me to dig the piece up and so here it is- in its raw and unedited glory prior to being posted on HockeyJournal.com.

All of my old work at NE Hockey Journal that was not in the printed issues is gone forever from the Internet, as no archive exists given the different format changes the website went through over the years since I started covering the Bruins there in the summer of 2000. All I have left are the files on my computer and so, on occasion, I’ll bring out the dead and we can take some trips in the Wayback Machine to save you any time otherwise wasted with a Google search- the old stuff no longer exists online.

Enjoy the column…in the 5 years hence, the Penguins have fared certainly better than the Bruins, with a pair of championships in 2016-17, but I have to admit- this one was a ton of fun to write. -KL

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Sweep dreams will end the Steel City nightmare (June 7, 2013- HockeyJournal.com)

For some reason, one particular ‘s’ word has somehow evolved to be on par with the one goalies don’t want you using before the shutout is actually in the books.

But say the word ‘sweep’ when your team is up 3 games to none, and everyone starts to get that queasy feeling in the pit of their stomach. In Boston, it’s understandable, given that we are just three years removed from a historic collapse against another team from the Keystone State after building a commanding series lead.

This column is not for the superstitious (another s-word since we’re on the subject), so if you’re one of those types, then you probably should stop reading now. However, if you’ve got an iron constitution and will in line with Gregory Campbell, or don’t take yourself (or sports) too seriously, then forge ahead.

On Friday, the Boston Bruins will sweep the Pittsburgh Penguins to take their place in the Stanley Cup final series for the second time in three years.

There it is. Carve it in stone or put it up in lights…it’s happening, folks.

Just as the B’s exorcised the demons of their agonizing 2010 seven-game loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in style with a sweep of their own just one year later, Boston can revisit history on Friday at the TD Garden. That was important, because it put an exclamation point on the Olde Towne’s first Stanley Cup championship in 39 years. That 2011 Cup victory was a euphoric rush for the Bruins and their fans, but does anyone deny that crushing the Flyers on the way to the summit of hockey supremacy made it all the sweeter?

Two years later, the Bruins have stunned the mighty (and heavily favored) Pittsburgh Penguins in capturing the first three games of the Eastern Conference Final series. This opportunistic, lunchpail group of Black and Gold-diggers have laughed in the face of the vaunted Steel City juggernaut thanks in large part to goaltender Tuukka Rask’s otherworldly performance in net and gritty production from stars like Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Brad Marchand and Nathan Horton.

In short, the B’s have taken everything the Penguins have thrown at them and then counterpunched to the tune of an 11-2 drubbing on the scoreboard. In those three games (and almost two extra periods), the front line skaters like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, James Neal, Jarome Iginla, and Kris Letang have combined for a grand total of no points between them.

It’s as if Dean Vernon “Zero Point Zero” Wormer were staring down Bluto Blutarsky as we speak.

The Bruins will sweep because even if they decisively won the first two games on the road in Pittsburgh by a combined 9-1 score, the Penguins showed some remarkable pluck by battling back in Game 3 to give the B’s all they could handle.

Aside from a Krejci puck off Matt Niskanen’s skate that got behind Tomas Vokoun at the 1:42 mark, the Penguins netminder was near flawless. Until Bergeron took a Marchand feed (thanks to a play along the boards by veteran Bruins forward Jaromir Jagr that would have made Peter Pan’s pirate nemesis proud) and put a dagger in the hearts of the Pittsburgh hopeful just after midnight in Boston.

By all rights, the Penguins should have won. But the hockey gods…ye gods…frowned on Crosby and Co., allowing the Bruins to hand flightless fowl a soul-crushing loss.

And so- the B’s are in position to not only sweep the Penguins, but to put the screws to one team that has been every bit the villain of any in the Boston franchise’s history.

Back in 1991, it wasn’t Crosby, but Mario Lemieux who led his Penguins back from a 0-2 deficit in the Wales Conference championship series. That club, complete with a 19-year-old rookie wunderkind in Jagr, smacked the B’s down in six games en route to easily handling the Minnesota North Stars for the first of two consecutive Stanley Cups. It was Ulf Samuelsson, however, who’s dirty hit on Boston legend Cam Neely hastened the end of No. 8’s Hall of Fame career.

A year later, the Bruins got a rematch in the Wales final, but without Neely (still suffering the after effects of the Samuelsson low blow), the high-flying Penguins blew Boston out of the water in a sweep. The series was punctuated by a highlight reel goal of Lemieux turning Ray Bourque inside-out, outside-in on the way to a back-breaking goal.

It has been 21 long years since the two teams met in the playoffs, but for many Boston fans, the Pens are still a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Matt Cooke’s blindside hit on Marc Savard in 2010 is only the tip of the iceberg, but the incident served as a flashpoint to escalate the rivalry between the teams.

Many cannot ignore the fact Pittsburgh not only landed a franchise player in Malkin in 2004, but also struck gold with the top lottery pick in the cancelled season a year later, essentially handed another hockey king in Crosby. Some won’t forget that when Ray Shero was on the verge of becoming the GM of the Boston Bruins in 2006, he opted for a more promising situation in Pittsburgh at the last minute.

If hell hath no fury like a Bruins fan scorned, then Iginla is the newest Boston target. In a much-publicized aborted trade fiasco, Iginla, the Calgary Flames and Penguins humiliated Peter Chiarelli and the Bruins. In what everyone but Iginla thought was a done deal, the Calgary captain instead elected to lift his no-trade for the Steel City only, leaving the Bruins holding the bag.

If you know the ever-simmering cauldron of intensity that is one Cameron Michael Neely, then you know that the way Pittsburgh embarrassed Boston by scooping Iginla and seeing the B’s snubbed so publicly must have re-ignited his burning desire to pay them back one hundredfold. So far, his team is doing just that.

Even if Iginla is proving that the best trades are sometimes the ones you don’t make, the smugness with which the Penguins and their fans swooped in to exult in the bitterness of Boston’s disappointment cemented that team’s status as Public Enemy No. 1.

If having a villain to focus your angst and anger is a cathartic, then consider the Penguins the therapist you have on speed dial.

The Bruins are in position to sweep away the nightmares of two crushing playoff defeats more than two decades ago. They’re poised to erase the visceral disgust of having lost so many prime years of Neely’s playing career to one of the dirtiest and unaccountable players in history.  They’re on the verge of gaining the ultimate revenge against all of the real and perceived slights that have accompanied one of the most heralded teams on paper in quite a few years.

They say revenge is sweet.

Or is it sweep?

It’s not over yet, but the best thing the Bruins can do is close the deal in Game 4 and put the bitterness behind them once and for all.

(As a bonus- Here’s the brilliant HNIC opening for Game 3 after the B’s won both games in Pittsburgh to Radiohead’s classic “Karma Police” with some amazing juxtaposition of imagery & lyrics)