Lindbergh Reference or ABA Reference?
At SB Nation Proper they point out a post on our Predators blog lambasting the obviousness with which the crown jewel of the NHL's free agent season flouted hockey's salary cap rules. Coming from a baseball background I admit a certain unfamiliarity with the rules of salary-capped sports, although the NHL's rules don't seem nearly so arcane as the NBA's; I think at some point an NBA team might acquire Ilya Kovalchuk in exchange for Jamal Mashburn's expiring contract and two picks in the NFL Draft.
But it seems clear to me that if a league must have a salary cap, it must also be prepared to keep machinations as transparent as the ones that will pay Kovalchuk $550,000 from 2022 to 2027 from interfering with it. If you want to pay Kovalchuk $12 million a year for five years, and the Devils clearly do, than do it, by all means; but teams should be prepared to deal with those ramifications instead of adding six years to the contract as a glorified sinecure to keep cap space free.
On a related note, the Cardinals might actually have to sign Albert Pujols to a 17-year contract.
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Edited by Dan Moore
Dan Moore has been writing about baseball on the internet since that was a novel thing to do. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he lives in Springfield, Illinois. See my profile
