Philly Front Office

True Flyers fans are a different breed. At some level, hockey is the perfect sport for the city. Players are tough, no nonsense, and they try hard. That lack of bullshit is in stark contrast to the NBA. Also in stark contrast, my total lack of knowledge of hockey business.

When I started this website I knew that I had a good grasp on the business of baseball, football, and basketball, but I threw the Flyers up on the tap bar kind of just because. I like the Flyers, but much more the same way I like Team USA. Are we winning? Awesome, I’m in. Oh, we lost…moving on. I am going to fix that.

The Flyers started a rebuild a few years ago and it got my attention. Casuals hate a good rebuild because it lacks the on-field (on-ice) excitement. The off-field (off-ice) stuff is soooo much more exciting though! We drafted a guy named Cutter Gauthier and that’s just the coolest name I ever heard. It sounded like he was playing for Team Iceland in D2. Then I heard the plan with Matvei Michkov maybe staying in Russia for years and I felt like Vince McMahon falling out of his chair. That is Hinkie-level Process stuff. Then things got personal. Cutter Gauthier refused to play for the Flyers. I felt like Marty Jannetty at the Barbershop. Never have I hated an athlete on so little, so quickly, and with such intensity. This was the modern JD Drew. I was hooked.

Now, I’m in. The only problem is that I don’t know anything. I feel like we should learn this together until we all feel like cap experts. I am going to use the reference pages over at Puckpedia because…damn. They know what they are talking about.

SALARY CAP

The NHL has a hard salary cap. This means that the number is the number and you have to stay below it. For reference, the NFL has a hard cap and the NBA has a soft cap. MLB only has a luxury tax deterrent system. You would think that for the most part a hard cap makes things straight forward. Well, like the NFL, not so much. There are all kinds of ways for teams to try to stay under the cap and get creative. We’ll get to those another time.

The cap itself is tied to the previous year’s revenue and has been going up steadily since the cap started after the 2004-5 season was detonated. Things were so bad that they actually lost a season over this. Not only did this lost season result in the cap, but a cap floor as well. Players weren’t about to say OK to a salary cap without some guarantee that the d-bags on the other side of the table would actually spend the money. This was essential in avoiding a Haves and Have-nots situation you see in baseball. For the current season, the salary cap is set at $88m with the floor at $65m.

ROSTER

NHL teams can have 23 players on the active roster with 3 of them being goalies. They also have a ton of players on their minor league affiliates. All of these guys have to be paid, but they don’t all count toward the cap. The ones that do are the ones that were up in the NHL but just aren’t good anymore. Think of it like getting sent to the minors without actually getting released. This is Cal Petersen right now.

Also not counting toward the cap or the roster is Long Term Injured Reserve (LTIR). This is a much longer thought topic, but if a player is going to be out for at least 10 games and 24 days, the team can get some salary cap relief for that time. They must be compliant upon the return of that player during the regular season (yup, you can game this for a player to come back during the playoffs and not have to account for the salary. The Lightning did this on their way to winning the Stanley Cup).

FLYERS RIGHT NOW

The Flyers have been right up to the hilt of the cap every year I can remember thanks to a lot of bad deals. These deals are almost over though. After this year about $5.5m comes off the books with Petersen and Anthony D’Angelo. Next year, Kevin Hayes and Cam Atkinson and their nearly $5.5m are finally gone. There is also Ryan Ellis. The Flyers will be paying him $6.25m this year, and next year…and the year after. Fortunately, this is a contract that is considered LTIR.

So where are we right now? Currently about $1.5m under the cap. This does not include the Ryan Ellis LTIR though. Why? Because we have a bit of a problem with a former player named Ryan Johansen. The Flyers released him without paying him and he had a problem with that. A grievance was filed and the Flyers may be responsible for that money, $4m. Needless to say things are tight come the trade deadline.

So where will we be tomorrow? Estimates have next year’s cap at around $92.5m. The Flyers should have about $18m-$24m to spend but have some young free agents that will need contracts.

Those are the basics. Over future weekends we will go into free agency, tv rights deals, and ways to manipulate the cap. Hopefully by the end we will know what we are talking about.