Bowman on Salary Cap: "We exploited it in a way."
by Quisp on Aug 7, 2010 10:15 PM PDT
in Capmania, Capaphobia, Capaphilia, Capnesia
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PrintChicago Blackhawks: You do the math - chicagotribune.com
Turns out the 2010 Stanley Cup champions' tricky winning equation depended on spending slightly more than $60 million when last year's cap was set at $56.8 million. The roughly $4 million overage came in the performance bonuses paid to Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, money the Hawks chose to count against next season's cap, as league rules permit, instead of affecting the go-for-it-all 2010 season.
Almost makes it sound like it wasn't a penalty.
Had Bowman decided to apply the anticipated $4 million hit to last season,
It did count against the cap last season. All bonuses count against the cap. Even unearned bonuses count against the cap until they definitively cannot be earned.
the Hawks likely would have attempted to win the Cup without, say, Andrew Ladd and Ben Eager. "Perceptions are, 'Geez, the Blackhawks mismanaged the salary cap, but I'd say we did the opposite — we managed the hell out of it,'' Bowman said. "We exploited it in a way.''
That last bit is funnier if you picture Jon Lovitz's liar guy from SNL saying it. The truth is, Bowman did a great job managing the mess that Tallon left behind. Of course, it would have been a much less great job if they hadn't won the cup, but they did, and that catapults Bowman to some lofty place mostly out of the reach of criticism.
[...] unprecedented exodus of players from a championship team that has created hockey panic in Chicago. [...] shedding nine players [...] comparisons to the fire sale of the 1997 World Series-winning Marlins [...] A month after Bowman took the job in July 2009, he showed newly hired assistant GM Kevin Cheveldayoff the books that revealed the contract reality that lie ahead — projections showed the Hawks would have been at least $10 million above the 2010-11 cap. "I laid it out for him and he was like, 'Wow,'" Bowman recalled.
Which is hilarious because I said the same thing the month before:
Chicago's options to not totally f*** itself are none too pretty - Jewels From The Crown
Chicago is holding steady at $1.34MM over the cap with three players left to sign. If they simply promote their prospects under contract to fill the spots (which is the cheapest option), that adds another $2.1MM, which makes the magic number $3.45MM (over the cap).Candidates for salary dump: Brian Campbell - cap his of $7.14MM for SEVEN MORE YEARS. If you ask me, that contract is literally untradeable. They would have to thrown in valuable assets as freebees just to make it palatable, and even then, there is no one who can afford it. Next... Cristobal Huet - $5.625MM for another three years. See Campbell, Brian above. No, he's their goalie, for awhile. Brent Sopel - $2.33MM for another two years. I doubt anyone will take him at that price. (note that these are Chicago's three UFA signings from last year; how's that working out so far?)
So it's going to have to be one of these guys, two of them if they have to take salary back... Sharp Bolland Versteeg Byfuglien Seabrook Barker (or, of course, Hossa. And wouldn't that be hilarious. Won't happen though, because Tallon would immediately be fired. No, it'll be one of the "core.")
Tallon was fired anyway, a couple of days later. And I was wrong, of course. They didn't lose one of Sharp, Bolland, Versteeg, Byfuglien, Seabrook and Barker. They lost three of them. Plus, Sopel. So four. It's a little alarming that the assistant GM didn't already know what Bowman was telling him. It's not like these are state secrets.
I did a second post last year which laid out the hideous 2010-11 picture:
Chicago 2010 Cap Madness Watch - Jewels From The Crown
So that's, at minimum, a cap hit of $57.6MM for next season. Over this year's cap by about a million; and we are all assuming the cap is going to go down a bit (or a lot, depending). Oh, and then there's the small matter of actually fielding a team... ...because that $57.6MM only buys the hawks 10 forwards, 4 defensemen and a goalie.
Luckily for the Hawks, the economy picked up a bit, otherwise, can you imagine how much worse the fire sale would have beenif the ceiling for 2010 was a few million lower? Back to the Trib article:
Throughout the season and playoffs, Bowman had been consistent about reminding Coach Q his roster would change after the season [...] "The details were an eye-opener for Joel, but then he was like, 'Geez, I wish we could keep this guy, but I see what you mean,'" Bowman said. [...] At the NHL draft, Bowman was quoted saying he didn't need to make any more trades to fit under the cap. Days later, he dealt Ladd and Versteeg. "You have to be honest with people but you also have to hold your cards close to the vest because I'm dealing with 29 (GMs) who are my adversaries," Bowman said. "The question was: Do you have to make any more moves for salary-cap reasons. Remember, the contracts for Toews, Kane and Keith began July 1, so in terms of being in compliance with the league, we didn't have to. I knew I had to make more trades. But if you broadcast (that to other GMs), … then I'm in trouble. I didn't lie to people. Technically I had until Oct. 1."
I wonder if it's harder to speak Bowman or to speak Lombardi.
[...] A famous Theodore Roosevelt quotation sits in a frame on Bowman's desk: "It is not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."
And at best you win the cup while daring greatly. Yeah, TR would have made a pretty good GM, now that I think about it. It really is too bad though, that Tallon had to make the Campbell and Huet deals and screw up the RFA contracts last summer, because without those three gigantic snafus, Byfuglien, Versteeg, Ladd, Eager, Ebbett and Barker (and several others) would probably still be hawks.
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Impossible scenario
Ok, the Hawks had to shed. Rules are rules, the cap is a cap. But The Panda has been forced to make some terrible choices. Its like, which side of the shit sandwich do you want to bite first? I am a Red Wings guy, and even I have empathy for this terrible situation that the Hawks face. I want that team back so we can beat them. To coin a movie phrase, “I love these little commie bastards. When we rotate back to the world, there isn’t going to be anyone around worth shooting!” No win situation for Hawks and Panda.
I LIKE IT
Time and time again, these overly greedy players and agents are left scrambling. Huet has never been worth more than 2.5/3 mil per year. Now he is going to play in the minors to collect his bank. All the above mentioned RFAs from last year (Buff and co.) jumped at their chance and took the ekstra mil/yr. Now….enjoy ATL.
Potentially, as pointed out by Quisp-All players will have to pay back even more if Kovy gets his contract okayed by arbitration.
The salary madness has got to stop.
Part of the blame falls on the Sathers of this world and now Tallon, but the players need to start seeing the big picture. Lots of teams are struggeling to make money and now we are starting to see the effect. This is by far the slowest UFA period I have witnessed. Im lovin it!
Blame the employer, not the employee...
The players wouldn’t get those salaries if the GMs weren’t willing to pay them. Players have relatively short careers and want to maximize their salary in the time they have so of course they are going to ask for as much as they can. But as we have seen this off-season, players can only earn as much as the GMs are willing to pay and if they are asking for too much, they won’t be playing.
There's plenty of blame to go around, I think.
Of course players have every right to get paid as much as they can, since they are going to have several decades of life left after retirement. The problem is, though, that there are frequently situations where this strategy of going for the most money possible backfires because it actually limits or eliminates a player’s opportunity to play in the NHL.
Huet is an obvious example, as he is likely to spend the next few years, if not the rest of his career, in the minors, or Europe. Skille (also from Chicago) couldn’t be promoted from the AHL because his contract was too big, so now in his new deal he’s taken a pay-cut, so he can actually get a chance to play. Schenn apparently negotiated bonuses he isn’t likely to earn, for the same reason, so that his cap hit didn’t price him out of a job.
I work in an industry that has similar forces in play, with similar money, and I find that agents — supposedly the advocates of their clients — are (not surprisingly) mostly interested in their own commission; it is in their best interests to drive the client’s price up no matter what the actual effect on the client will be. The agent’s and client’s interests overlap, but only to a point. There will be other clients, but for the clients, there will not be other careers.
The NHLPA, also, has an interest in driving up players’ salaries. It makes them look good. It’s good for business. And to a certain extent, it’s their job. But as we’ve seen with the Kovalchuk contract and others like it, beyond a point, driving up salaries really means redistributing wealth from the weaker players to the stronger ones. The fact that, under this CBA, the pie is literally of a fixed size every year, just makes that fact all the more obvious.
Wait till this year.
Not exactly...
The whole situation is more complex than described as above. The Hawks put together a winning team. Good for them, gives me hope as a Kings’ fan.
Problem is, this team (Hawks) cannot be sustained due to the constraints of the cap. You are correct in that GM’s must use better discretion which players to pay a lot. However, the cap is so constraining that one or two mistakes (e.g. Huet and Brian Campbell) and you have to eject a large part of the team.
This leaves GM’s very little room to maneuver and makes these big contracts very risky. In a way, I am glad that DL did not offer stupid amounts of money to Kovalchuk as it could really hurt the team later on. Superficial observers characterize DL and AEG as “cheap”, no they are just being smart businessmen.
Of course, one wonders what will happen with the next CBA. Personally, I think too tight of a cap is not good for the sport as evidenced by the Hawks fire sale. The cap should not destroy good teams. Having said that, if the cap were to go up, salaries may rise accordingly with the same dilemna with just higher numbers. This is one of the generic issues with the concept of a salary cap. I’m not sure how this could be reconciled…
But it's the teams (the owners) who want the cap and who also want to have an even more constraining cap come 2012
I agree with you 100% re Lombardi and Kovalchuk.
But I disagree with your assertion that the cap is to blame for the Hawks’ problems. Nobody thought the Huet or Campbell contracts were a good idea at the time. Even outside of the cap world, that’s just stupidity. To say nothing of the whole RFA incident. Tallon just f***ed himself and the hawks with those missteps. Those aren’t one or two teeny-tiny mistakes. Those are mistakes that are so bad that those contracts are literally untradeable. That’s saying a lot in a world where Sather and Sutter still roam.
I actually like the cap. I like that it rewards smart GMs who can plan and punishes the ones who aren’t and don’t. I like that it adds this long-term chess element to the game.
I am, however, not a big fan of forced parity. I agree with you in general on the principle of not having a CBA that destroys great teams in order to level the playing field. I just don’t think that’s what’s happening in this case.
Wait till this year.
We're keeping Campbell
Trading him really isn’t a plausible option and besides Campbell gives us a really good puck moving dman who did a phenomenal job down the stretch.
I think given the circumstances, Bowman did a great job in handling the Capocolypse. He basically traded away the supporting cast for young talent 1-2 years away from producing and did better than expected in deals for Byfuglien and Versteeg. (I’m not a fan of the Ladd deal but it was okay too).
Yeah we kinda got Hjalmarsson poached from us which ended up costing us Niemi but we were able to replace Niemi with Marty Turco who if he proves he doesn’t suck, will end up looking pretty good.
I see this summer as the "market correction" phase in the evolution of the salray cap era.
In Chicago, the team is rent asunder. In New Jersey, the arbitration. In the Free Agency market, guys sit for a month or so, take smaller contracts than projected, or don’t get signed at all. All these things are, to me, signs that the owners and players alike are realizing that the CBA/Cap have enough teeth to warrant adherence, and as a result the market prices are affected downward. Natural progression, with the “cap” having what had to be the desired effect.
First, you get a salary cap. Then, you learn how to stretch it using loopholes. Eventually, teams find ways that they think, as did Bowman, that they can “exploit” the loopholes and still win while actually temporarily defeating the premise of the cap itself. But then comes the consequences; in Chicago, the team is gutted and the following year their cap is even smaller due to penalty. In New Jersey, they had to create an obviously ridiculous set of terms in order to give a player what he really demanded, the 100 mill in ten years. But it doesn’t fly, even temporarily; the League objected, and gave notice of same, even before it was publicly announced. I can see the ongoing effect of the cap, as it has been trending across the market; last year Malhotra signing for less so that he could play on a team to showcase his talent to get a better contract the following year, for example, many other players doing the same this year by signing one-year deals, Frolov signing for much less than his original expectation, and so on.
One predicted effect of the salray cap was many high dollar contracts and many low dollar contracts, with fewer middle amount contracts; the squeeze on the middle class, as it were. And, that has occurred to some degree, but I think there is an adjustment now, the rubber band snapping back, that will continue; the high dollar contracts are seen as such albatross that GMs will have to be hesitant to award them to the same degree. A small shift downward, perhaps, but a change nonetheless, and a more significant change when refracted through the prism of escalating contracts amounts that forced the cap to be implemented in the first place.
I like the idea of a cap, it is just a fact of life that there must be something to level the income field between a market like New York and Columbus. I like having so many teams, 30 is a great number. Imagine the old days, the greater number of years, when there were only 6 teams. Chicago was the wild west boondocks in that era. I mean seriously, imagine playing only 5 other teams ALL SEASON AND PLAYOFFS. If the cap is needed to preserve the diversity, and there is no better idea at this time, than I am all for it. If there is something required to temper greed on both the player’s and owner’s parts, than I am all for it as long as it remains fair to all teams and results in franchise viability for smaller markets.
Player salaries are just one of the many affected areas the cap is designed to regulate. We will see if the wording of the CBA is adequate to enforce itself in the Kovalchuk morass but already I am pleased with what the Cap has done and is seeming to do in the other areas of enforcement and effect.
End Corporate Personhood.
“I knew I had to make more trades. But if you broadcast (that to other GMs), … then I’m in trouble. I didn’t lie to people. Technically I had until Oct. 1.”
Who actually bought that, though? Those other GMs can’t do math either? Can’t read any articles? Can’t take even the most casual glance at Capgeek?
Gracious. I don’t know who believed him when he said that. I don’t think informed fans in Chicago did. If any GMs were snookered, I have a much lower estimation of their skills. But I don’t really see any “Ha ha I fooled you” kind of magic reflected in the purge trades (they got a wonderful return for Byfuglien, but that was more influenced by Atlanta’s desperate need for some marketable players right now, IMO).
Bowman can spin this as much as he wants, but even some things that weren’t under his control worked out in his favor. The cap ceiling was raised. Even Hjalmarsson’s offer sheet was fairly reasonable — that could have been a lot worse. Is that the “method behind the madness”? Okay.
They took a hell of a risk this year. Since it paid off, outcome bias tends to color a lot of our judgment. But it’s not the terrible, evil cap that is tearing them apart so much as the natural consequences of Dale Tallon’s decision making. They have to take the good and the bad — and thank their lucky stars they also had the good.
In Dinglebarn We Trust
by Niesy on Aug 8, 2010 8:44 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Agreed
It is easy to look at the trades Chicago made to make it back under the Cap and say ‘See, we were in good shape all along.’
Because big-money contracts are still very prevalent (even though I agree with the beginning of the market correction that Player-X alludes to), I worry that the next CBA will bring the possibility of other Professional Sports models in North America. In that, I mean contracts that are not guaranteed, like in the NFL where teams have the ability to simply cut a player for whatever reason. If that were to happen, that although more of these giant contracts will be handed out, knowing that they could back out at any time. I worry for that day, only owners benefit from non-guaranteed contracts.
There is something I would like the NHL to take from the NFL, and that is the protecting of ‘Franchise’ players. This way, a team like Chicago would not have to necessarily dismantle their team to fit under the Cap. But rather, they could ‘Franchise’ a homegrown talent (that would be a stipulation in my fantasy world, that the team would have to actually draft said player) to where his salary would not count against the Cap. So, Toews $6.3M doesn’t count against Chicago’s Cap (not Campbell’s, he wasn’t drafted by the Hawks), leaving them the necessary room to sign their RFA’s. What do you guys think of the ‘Franchise’ Player tag in the NHL.
"Don't worry about my Cap." - Lou Lamoriello
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