The rumours we have heard all season long suggest that Cristobal Huet is going to be buried in the minors so that the Chicago Blackhawks can stay under the salary cap.
This is an interesting conundrum. After all, if Chicago sends him to the AHL, they magically get $5.625 million in cap space.
The point of the salary cap was to discourage this. NHL GMs in the past paid ludicrous sums of money to free agents, and then we saw two-thirds of the league on the verge of bankruptcy. So this was supposed to slow down the free-spending ways.
With the CBA that created the salary cap, several loopholes were created.
For instance, the long-term contract we all know and hate. If the NHLPA beats the NHL and Kovalchuk gets his contract, then once again the big market teams can spend like crazy. Of course, this will cause teams to go on the verge of bankruptcy again (see Phoenix Coyotes).
However, another major loophole that is often ignored is the sending players to the minors. This means they are do not count against the salary cap at all. So far, we have not seen teams send a player earning a lot of money down to the minors.
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Imtiaz Ferdous
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