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Quick CBA rules/NHL contract impact tutorial + impacts on Canes roster

August 12, 2013, 12:25 PM ET [10 Comments]
Matt Karash
Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
In a simple scenario, the Canes opening day roster would be determined solely by which 20-23 players the coaching staff gave the team the best chance to win. But CBA rules and contract situations sometimes have a significant say in choosing the last few roster spots. In this dog days of August blog, I will take a shot at detailing how contract/CBA situations could impact the Canes opening day roster.

First a few basic definitions:

--1-way contract: A 1-way contract simply means that a player gets paid the same salary whether he plays at the NHL or AHL level. This is the norm for veteran NHLers. The team could in theory send veteran players like Eric Staal, Tuomo Ruutu, Tim Gleason, etc. to the minors, but even if it did the players would still be owed their NHL salary.

--2-way contract: Younger players who have not yet established themselves as regular NHLers are usually signed to 2-way contracts. This means that they have 1 pay rate for time spent in the NHL (minimum is $550k, it can range up to $1M or more) and a different salary (usually $60k-160ish k) if they play in the AHL.

--Waiver exempt vs. not exempt: Waiver exempt means that an NHL team can freely send a player to the AHL without any risk that another team claims him. Not exempt players can be claimed by other teams when sent to the minors. The claiming team gets the player more or less for free, assumes their current contract but also MUST keep the team at the NHL level. Claimed players cannot be sent to the minors. They instead go back on waivers to again be claimed by another team or ultimately returned to their original team. This happened with Zach Boychuk. I will skip all of the waiver details, but the short version is that via some combination of age and/or NHL games experience makes players have to clear waivers to be sent to the minors. The aim here is to make sure that players who have paid their dues in the minors and are good enough to play in the NHL (on any team) get their chance. Almost all 18-20 year olds are waiver exempt. 21-22 year olds without much NHL experience are usually waiver exempt. And 23 year olds generally start needing to clear waivers regardless of NHL experience.

It is important to distinguish between contract and waivers. They are completely separate. What kind of contract a player is signed to is pretty much irrelevant to the waiver situation.

There are 2 other considerations that come into play most often with Canadien junior players and sometimes European draftees. First, the NHL has an agreement with the Canadien junior leagues that forces 18-19 year old (first 2 seasons after being drafted) junior players to either play at the NHL level or be returned to juniors for the entire season. So these players cannot be sent to the AHL. And they cannot be recalled from juniors to the NHL after being sent down. Ryan Murphy was a strange exception last year in that the Canes were allowed to do an emergency recall only because they had so many injuries on defense. But in general, once a player is returned to juniors he is gone for the season. The second consideration for junior level players is the triggering of their entry-level contract. These initial contracts are favorable for the NHL teams because the terms are mostly fixed by the CBA and are at inexpensive prices. These contracts last 3 years. But the catch is that they are not triggered until a player plays 10 games at the NHL level. If the 10-game threshold is not reached, the contract slides forward 1 year and still has 3 years remaining. Teams have an incentive NOT to trigger the entry-level contract for young players since it pushes them closer to having to pay them a higher level salary and the games played also factor into how soon they reach waiver and more importantly free agent status.

So with the basic CBA and contract stuff defined, how does this affect the Canes for 2013-14? The short answer is that it could be quite significantly. The Canes have a large number of players that will need to clear waivers to get to Charlotte if they do not make the NHL team. The Canes also have some issues with 1-way contracts and players who are “NHL or gone.”

At forward it goes like this:
The Canes have 8 veterans on 1-way contracts who are all but assured to make the team anyway (EStaal, Semin, Tlusty, JStaal, Skinner, Ruutu, Westgarth, Dwyer). That is the easy part.

The Canes have 2 more players on 1-way contracts – Bowman at $600k and Welsh at $1M ($850k salary cap hit). Financially, the Canes have an incentive to keep these 2 players at the NHL level because even if they are sent to Charlotte, they must be paid their full NHL salary anyway.

The Canes have a small army of 7 players who are on 2-way contracts but must clear waivers to get to Charlotte. The list includes 2012-13 players Jared Staal, Brett Sutter, Zac Dalpe, Zach Boychuk (if he signs), Riley Nash and new signees Aaron Palushaj and Nathan Gerbe. Financially, all are signed to contracts where they get paid an appropriate salary either at the NHL or AHL level. But the risk is that if the Canes try to send any of them to the AHL another team can claim them as long as they keep them on their NHL roster (as happened to Zach Boychuk last season). So there is a slight bias toward giving some of these players a shot at the NHL to start the season because if it does not happen then, they could be gone later.

Many of the younger players farther down the depth chart (i.e. most of the players at the Summerfest prospect camp) are still young enough/light enough on NHL experience that they are playing on 2-way contracts and do not need to clear waivers to develop below the NHL level. Some are AHL players who you can get to later and others would be headed back to juniors.

The details for the couple younger players most likely to impact the forward ranks in 2013-14 are:

--Brock McGinn. He fits into the category of entry-level contract Canadien junior player which means 2 things. First, if the Canes do not keep him at the NHL level, he must be returned to juniors (cannot go to AHL) and cannot be recalled from there (except in injury emergency like Ryan Murphy last year). Also, if he plays fewer than 10 games at the NHL level, his entry-level contract would not be activated. The result is that the Canes have a bias to send him back to juniors unless they think he makes them much better than the other options. The Canes get the benefit of letting his entry-level contract slide and he gets to develop playing 18 minutes per night versus being a 4th-liner or healthy scratch in the NHL.

--Victor Rask. He graduates to the AHL/NHL level this year, and he is still waivers exempt. This means that the Canes can easily get him to/from the AHL without risk of losing him. The result is that he is more likely than the other options to start the season in Charlotte simply because there is no risk in losing him by doing this. For example, if camp shakes out that the team is 50/50 on whether it wants to take a last shot with Zac Dalpe (or Boychuk, etc.) or turn a spot over to Rask, it would go with Dalpe to start the season. This way the team does not risk losing Dalpe or whoever to waivers.

--Elias Lindholm. All indications from the team in that Lindholm will be given a spot in the NHL. His situation is similar to Brock McGinn’s in that his contract dictates that he either must play at the NHL level or be returned to his Swedish team. He cannot be shuttled to and from Charlotte in 2013-14.

When you net it out at forward, I think you get this:

1) IF any/all of the “older youth” (Dalpe, Nash, Palushaj, Gerbe) look good in camp, the team will be inclined to start them on the NHL roster for fear of losing them to waivers if they do not.

2) Victor Rask needs to clearly rise above the fray to earn a spot on the opening day roster, otherwise it is too easy to just to use his waiver-exempt status to put him in Charlotte to start the year and see which of the other players work out.

3) Elias Lindholm is very likely to be given an opening day spot because it is the only way he stays in Raleigh this season.

4) Brock McGinn needs to blow the doors off in camp to get into the mix otherwise the case for sliding his entry-level contract forward a year, getting him 18 minutes of ice time to develop and taking another look next summer is more likely.

5) Drayson Bowman’s 1-way contract puts him in a strong position to win an opening night roster spot. Jeremy Welsh is in a similar position, but he is still a bit more of a dark horse given his very limited NHL experience.

The blue line is a little less murky. Joni Pitkanen, Tim Gleason, Jay Harrison, Andrej Sekera and Mike Komisarek are all veterans on 1-way contracts. Justin Faulk is actually still on a 2-way contract, but he obviously gets a spot at the NHL level. An injury would make an opening in the lineup but otherwise Ryan Murphy and everyone else is basically trying to make a case for being a 7th defenseman on the NHL roster. As noted in a previous blog, Murphy’s biggest case is if he can help the power play. Murphy is on a 2-way contract and is not subject to waivers yet, so he is a bit like Victor Rask in that he can fairly easily be shuttled from Charlotte to Raleigh as needed with no risk to losing him on waivers.

On defense, when I net it out, I think the Canes have a bias toward starting Murphy in the AHL unless he just blows the doors off in camp. There he can get 20+ minutes of ice time to continue his development, and it saves the team a few $ via not carrying an extra defenseman. And he is always a phone call away if an injury opens up a spot.

Goalie is also set with 1 small note. Cam Ward and Anton Khudobin are on 1-way NHL contracts as you would expect. Justin Peters is as well. This means that the Canes will have to pay him an NHL salary for probably playing most of the season in the AHL barring an injury to Ward or Khudobin.

What say you Canes fans? Which of these contract/CBA rule situations has the biggest impact on the Canes 2013-14 opening day roster? 3 years removed from playoffs, does the team just ignore it all and do everything it can to ice a playoff team? Who would you most worry about being claimed off waivers if the Canes tried to send them to the AHL?

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