Vintage

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We'll leave the emotional aspect of Daniel Alfredsson's departure from Ottawa to people who live there. The logistical twists and turns -- the player said this, the owner said that, the GM said this and that -- are hilarious enough.

The more relevant question to come out of Alfredsson's "Goodbye, everyone" press conference on Thursday: Did he and the team seriously have an agreement that he'd retire before his last contract was up, then structure said contract in a way that added an effectively fake, cap-hit-crushing year on to the back end of the deal? Because he says that happened. And that is not allowed.

"When I did my last contract for four years ending in the (2012-13) season, I was asked to help the team manage the salary cap by adding on a extra year to my contract. I agreed. Each side fully expected I would retire and not play the 2012-13 season,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," on Thursday. That contract lasted from 2009-13 and paid him $7 million in the first two seasons, $4.5 million in the third and $1 million in the fourth.
At some point, though, Alfredsson decided not to retire. In 2012, when it came time to negotiate a new contract,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he said, he reminded them of the agreement and wanted recompense. It wasn't coming,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Alfredsson said, so talks derailed, and he eventually signed a one-year, $5.5 million contract .
Again -- that first part is not (and was not) allowed. Remember "cap circumvention"? That sounds pretty cap circumventory. The good news for the Senators, though, is that most teams were structuring deals that way back then; the league only stepped in when .
Adding a fake year solely to drive down a cap hit is cut-and-dry -- at least if you're going to bother attempting to retroactively define the term and punish teams for it. None of that should happen, but the situation,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], if nothing else, is proof that the league's punishment of the Devils was weird and logically dubious. The whole exercise has an undefinable quality to it, largely because there was no actual definition of cap circumvention in the previous CBA.
UPDATE: NHL deputy commissioner that the agreement between Alfredsson and Ottawa indeed qualifies as circumvention,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but that the practice was "rampant" under the last CBA, and that the league wouldn't look backward. Not sure how neatly that mindset coexists with the , but whatever.
In any case,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Alfredsson's 10-minute talk seemed to take public opinion and put it firmly back in his favor. The fact that some Sens fans were kinda-sorta-siding with owner Eugene Melnyk over a civic treasure always seemed weird. Thankfully, that's fixed.