Just when the dust settled and the Blackhawks were back to having a close to normal off-season, the NHL has decided to investigate into Marian Hossa‘s twelve-year $62.8M contract. What the league is trying to find out is whether the topic of retiring before the contract expires at the end of the 2020-21 season was discussed during negotiations. If that is the case, it is against the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and the Blackhawks could be fined up to $5M and the loss of future draft picks.
Hossa’s twelve-year contract is broken down into this: First seven years he will make $7.9M; the next year it drops to $4M; then lowers again for the next two seasons to $1M; in the last two years of his Hossa is slated to earn $0.750M. The result is a cap friendly $5.233M contact. If Hossa were to retire before his contract expires, the Blackhawks would be off the hook for the years and money remaining on his contract.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly is quoted saying:
We’re trying to understand how it was negotiated and whether the intent and effect is to circumvent the cap. This was the first of the long-term contracts that took a player out past the age 40 and the value of the contract in its ‘out years’ was dramatically lower than its early years. We want to know if the possibility of player retirement was ever discussed or even contemplated.”
There are those around the league that frown upon the practice of signing players to contracts such as Hossa’s. The way his contract is structured is clever, and it’s the final four years of his contract – significantly lowering his cap hit – that has the league’s panties in a bunch. The Blackhawks used the current CBA to their advantage , or what the league is calling ‘circumventing the cap’, with Hossa’s contract.
It’s obvious that the league is out the make an example of the Chicago Blackhawks regarding long-term contracts such as these. Detroit and Philadelphia have signed players to similar structured contracts, but the ‘Hawks did take it a step further. The league will have a hard time proving what was talked about during negotiations, though.
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[...] reiterate what I wrote in mypost on Friday, Hossa’s salary cap-hit is $5.233M. That number is derived from averaging the salary [...]