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Luongo’s Contract In Jeopardy
Written on September 2, 2010 at 08:58, by HTTN
On Thursday, Ian Walker of the Vancouver Sun wrote that Roberto Luongo’s contract could be rejected by the NHL as early as Friday.
He bases this on an article by Larry Brooks of the New York Post, which states that NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, sent an email to the NHLPA on Thursday night which hinges the league’s acceptance of Ilya Kovalchuk’s new 15-year contract, as well as the grandfathering in of Marian Hossa’s and Roberto Luongo’s deals, on the the union’s consent to a set of conditions.
The conditions are, as written by Brooks:
1. That the cap hit on future multiyear contracts will not count any season that ends with the player over 40 years of age. The cap hit would be based on the average salary of the seasons in the contract up to age 40.
2. That the cap hit on future contracts longer than five years would be calculated by granting additional weight — perhaps the average — to the five consecutive years with the largest average salary.
According to Brooks, if the NHLPA does not agree to these conditions, the NHL will reject Kovalchuk’s contract, de-register Luongo’s (in effect, rejecting it as well), and launch a formal investigation into Hossa’s.
A Renegotiation of the CBA
If this email truly was sent by the NHL, it is a bizarre negotiation tactic.
First – it is odd that the NHL is essentially attempting to renegotiate the current CBA 2 years before it is set to expire. Second, if the ultimatum on the changes to the CBA is not consented to, 3 players will be punished.
Upon reading this, I pose this question to you: if you were a member of the NHLPA, would you accept the conditions? You would lose some of the features of the CBA that your union worked very hard to gain during the lockout, but 3 players would escape with their contracts unharmed. Does this make sense? What incentive do the 597 players not named Luongo, Hossa, or Kovalchuk have to do this?
It all seems very out of the ordinary, and it’s hard to believe that the NHL would send an email like this. Fortunately, the deadline for the acceptance of Kovalchuk’s deal is Friday, so we won’t have to wait long to find out the true story.
