Comments on: Weber Circumvention, pt. 2

By: RockiesTop

RockiesTop — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:11:00 +0000

If they really wanted to stop the circumvention of the intent of the CBA, they should just remove the averaging of the cap hit. I don’t see any of the mega-contract players playing for $1M for the last several years of their contracts. If Philly had to fit $14M intead of $7.86M into their cap structure, they couldn’t do this deal. Also, since the longest insurable contract is 7 years, that should be the maximum length.

By: Quisp

Quisp — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 05:56:00 +0000

Well, these are incredibly smart and crafty folks. I’m sure all of these ideas have been batted around ad nauseum behind closed doors. The question is not really “is there a legitimate argument to be made” but “do we care?” They might not care.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:49:00 +0000

I think this contract gets nixed not because of the length but because that most of Weber’s salary is coming from his signing bonus. That to me is the part that will get them in the end. Weber’s salary for the first couple years is $1 million but he will be getting paid $14 million. If that isn’t against the spirit of the CBA, what is?

By: JamesFlagg

JamesFlagg — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Great analysis on the Weber offer sheet……I have a feeling that league administrators are probably reading your stuff and thinking, “you know, I never thought about that”……

By: Quisp

Quisp — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:54:00 +0000

I agree. The Kovalchuk contract was egregious on pretty much every level. It compares to the Weber offer sheet in a narrower sense. The question is: how much like Kovalchuk do you have to be to get nixed?

(The other issue is the league’s desire or lack of desire to address it; they may not care the way they cared with Kovalchuk; those are political issues and I have no idea what’s going on behind those closed doors.)

By: Jeff H

Jeff H — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:43:00 +0000

Ooooh, the plot thickens!

You are leaving out one important detail, however, and one that league cited as the most important, which was that Kovalchuk was getting paid until he was 44. As you said in another post, there is some arbitrary rule about age 41 now, but you can adjust the numbers to have the same “retirement/late career” effect even if you don’t run the contract way past a reasonable retirement age. The Kovy deal was just so blatant that they dared the arbitrator to invalidate it, and he didn’t bluff.