By Hockey5
Published: September 5, 2010 PrintEmail
The NHL and its players worked into the wee hours of Saturday morning to close a salary cap loophole you could drive Nik Lidstrom's Bentley through.
In the end, Ilya Kovalchuk finally got his $100 million from the New Jersey Devils, and the NHL came up with new limits on long-term contracts that take players into middle age.
The issue and it's resolution have become an obsession in the hockey media - one of the perils of August, when there's so little to write about.
But for casual fans, the "Kovalchuk amendment" can be filed away as just another niggling set of details in the league's arcane salary-cap structure.
It's one loophole closed in the battle to keep free-spending NHL teams in check.
But that doesn't mean the salary cap is now watertight.
Creative general managers will always find a way to hide mistakes and dodge unattractive cap hits. It's part of their job.
(Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)Bring on the Next Loophole originally appeared on About.com Hockey on Sunday, September 5th, 2010 at 19:03:48.Permalink | Comment | Email this