Oilers GM Holland helped to create polarizing salary cap loophole
Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland is partly responsible for the controversial LTIR loophole that teams like the Vegas Golden Knights have been taking advantage of.
The loophole works by allowing teams to go over the $83.5 million salary cap as far as the amount of money they have placed on LTIR. For example, the Golden Knights now have a cap hit of $92.3 million due to Mark Stone’s $9.5 million, Robin Lehner’s $5 million, and William Carrier’s $1.4 million being on LTIR.
These players are expected to miss the regular season but could return to the playoffs, along with all the other additions they made in their absence, because there is no cap for teams in the playoffs. This means that despite having a roster that is $8 million over the legal cap, the Golden Knights’ roster would be completely legal come playoff time.
A popular thought to close this loophole would be to have the salary cap extend into the playoffs so teams have to remain cap-compliant, as they do during the regular season. This argument was initially brought up in the 2005 CBA negotiations but, according to Elliotte Friedman on the latest 32 Thoughts podcast, Holland convinced managers against the idea.
“In the 2002 playoffs, when Toronto went to the Eastern Conference Final against Carolina and lost, the Maple Leafs had like 10 guys injured,” said Friedman. “Holland said ‘What if that happens to you and you can’t field a team in the playoffs? You’re not going to want that’ and he was right, nobody wanted that, that’s why there is no cap in the playoffs.”
It’s a solid argument, but one that may be getting more annoying for the veteran GM as the Golden Knights are now in direct competition with the Oilers and have used the strategy once already to help them eliminate Edmonton from last year’s playoffs.
There is a good possibility that these two teams meet in the playoffs again this year, but this time with Vegas adding guys like Anthony Mantha, Noah Hanifin, and Tomas Hertl. If Stone returns from injury just in time for the postseason, you can expect some angry Oilers fans.
Edmonton, on the other hand, has been hampered by their cap situation and was limited to adding just Adam Henrique, Sam Carrick, and Troy Stecher. Those players will shore up depth, but they won’t have the same impact as the players Vegas acquired.
As things shake out right now, a potential Oilers-Golden Knights playoff series would represent an $8.9 million difference between each team’s respective cap hits.