With about 20-games remaining for most teams, the National Hockey League’s trade deadline came, and went Monday.
With 10 teams in both the east and west conferences still within reasonable striking distance of a playoff spot one might have expected a flurry of activity.
There was in fact a number of moves made Monday, none that could be called blockbuster though. The salary cap stops such deals from being more than media dreaming.
The biggest impact was likely Tyler Toffoli from Los Angeles to Vancouver, although the deal was completed ahead of the deadline by a few days. The move puts the Canucks in a rare position of being the best Canadian team headed to the playoffs.
The Calgary Flames added some nice blueline depth in adding two 27-year-olds, left-shooting defencemen in Erik Gustafsson from the Chicago Blackhawks and Derek Forbort from the Los Angeles Kings. That should infuse the Flames with some fresh energy.
In Edmonton the additions of forward Andreas Athanasiou and defenceman Mike Green, both from Detroit where Oiler GM Ken Holland has a relationship, are nice pieces for the Oilers, but their goaltending just does not inspire playoff confidence.
The only other Canadian team to make any moves was Ottawa who divested itself of veterans, built up draft day assets, and are now two or three years from seeing if they won, or lost the day.
In the end though, the thing that keeps 20 teams in the playoff hunt on Feb. 24, is also the thing that stymies the big trades the deadline should foster. That thing is the NHL salary cap.
The salary cap keeps the very rich teams from simply stockpiling a dozen stars, and allows even the lowliest of teams to keep slogging along at some level of competency without losing the owner’s shirt in the process. Couple something of a homogenization talent created by the salary cap with the ability to garner points for mediocre effort – the overtime loss point – and teams stay in the hunt.
But come trade deadline the cap becomes a massive anchor on player movement. Many teams find themselves up against the salary cap with little room to pull off the big trade, especially if the player coveted is a veteran with a big contract. While it would often aid the team at the bottom of the standings to move a big contract for younger blood, finding cap space with a top team is a barrier.
What is required is a bit more flexibility.
Sports teams, while a business, are also a bit different for many owners, owners willing to spend a bit more to have a better shot at a championship.
So, why not let them make that extra investment in a controlled fashion?
There would be merit in expanding the salary cap by ‘X’ amount – 20 per cent for the sake of discussion. The extension would be effective from one-week prior to the trade deadline until the day prior to the start of the next season.
Teams wanting to make a hard run at the Stanley Cup can invest in that effort by overspending, although it would only constitute overpaying for 20-games.
They would then have to manoeuvre through trades, and free agents moving on, to get back under the cap to start the next season, allowing for the parity to continue that keeps teams in the hunt.
It is a have cake and eat it too idea that should work, and would make the run to the playoffs far more intriguing.
