You can understand why fans are cynical when it comes to the Vegas Golden Knights and their ability for the second year in a row to improve their team due to Mark Stone being placed on long-term injured reserve.
In the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season, Nikita Kucherov underwent hip surgery in December — an operation that, yes, knocked one of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s best players out of their lineup for the regular season but also magically solved their salary-cap headaches for the rest of the season.
Then, March 13, less than three months after surgery, Kucherov hit the ice for the first time with his team.
He skated and practiced for two months.
The regular season ended May 10. Kucherov wasn’t in the Lightning’s lineup in the finale, but six days later, there he was, scoring twice in his season debut and the Lightning’s series-opening win against the Florida Panthers.
A round later, after the Lightning had dispatched the Carolina Hurricanes, then-Canes defenseman Dougie Hamilton pointed out that they had “lost to a team that was $18 million over the cap.”
The rest of the playoffs, it felt like Kucherov and the Lightning were flaunting the fact that they had gotten away with something unkosher, particularly in the Stanley Cup boat parade, in which Kucherov, who led the playoffs in assists and points, and many of his teammates wore “$18M OVER THE CAP” T-shirts with a drawing of Kucherov guzzling a beer.
How do we feel about Kuch’s “18m over the cap” shirt? 😏 pic.twitter.com/3Wceh9veg5
— Bodog (@BodogCA) July 11, 2021
The team itself even tweeted out a photo featuring the shirt.
We’re hitting the water!
Who are we seeing at the parade today, #Bolts fans? ⛵️ pic.twitter.com/irFahTpLsz
— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) July 12, 2021
All it did was further perpetuate the belief that the Lightning had circumvented the cap by taking advantage of the rule in the collective bargaining agreement that allows teams to go over the cap by an amount equal to the total of the cap hit of a player or players on LTIR. In the regular season, a team must become cap-compliant again once that player returns. But since the salary cap disappears in the playoffs, the rule essentially provides teams a loophole that could be manipulated by sitting a player out until the playoffs.
It wasn’t the first time the issue had come up. In 2015, Patrick Kane broke his collarbone in late February. The Blackhawks placed him on LTIR and acquired Antoine Vermette, Kimmo Timonen and Andrew Desjardins. Kane returned for the start of the playoffs and led Chicago in playoff goals and points on its way to a Cup win.
The Golden Knights are not playing games with the Stone situation, though, general manager Kelly McCrimmon says, emphasizing that his team’s captain is out with a “serious internal injury, a lacerated spleen.”
“In Mark’s case, last year, he was hurt in January. … He tried to rehab it for the last two weeks of January, then had another setback in his rehab, so the decision was made for him to have surgery,” McCrimmon said on Wednesday’s The Athletic Hockey Show. “So that’s what we did a year ago.
“This year, he ended up with a real serious internal injury, a lacerated spleen — from a fairly routine check, more of a collision. … So that’s gonna end his regular season and perhaps more.”
Stone’s latest long-term injury did allow the defending Stanley Cup champs to load up ahead of the trade deadline, trading for Calgary Flames defenseman Noah Hanifin, Washington Capitals forward Anthony Mantha and, to the shock of the hockey world, San Jose Sharks forward Tomas Hertl.
After cap retentions from the other teams, those players will cost the Golden Knights a combined $10,837,500 against the cap when Hertl returns from his own injury (expected before the playoffs). Stone’s cap hit is $9.5 million.
“We’ve been ‘lucky,’” McCrimmon said. “Our captain and heart-and-soul leader has…
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