Heroic Shrimp said:
cw said:
Ballard was put on regular waivers today. Not the $100 unconditional waivers which is necessary for buyout purposes. They still have time to do that and seemingly have no choice with Booth's injury as they're desperate for cap room. In other words, they're in a bigger cap mess than I thought.
I'm really unsure whether or not Gillis was truly aware of the cap trouble he was heading toward. It's all well and good to talk up Luongo's trade value as he did and bluff about not giving him away as he really needed to do, but I really can't tell how much he privately recognized the both likelihood and the great necessity of giving Luongo away to help bail out his increasingly desperate cap situation. He doubled down on a really bad hand.
Here's a recap of some facts:
1. As you know, this is a part of the exercise every GM must go through to manage their cap - they would look out to these years with more focus on the next two or three:
2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20
http://capgeek.com/canucks/
It is a time phased math problem.
2. Gillis should have known trying to carry two goalies at $9.3 mil cap hit was going to be a problem when he re-signed Schneider in June. And he effectively did in by June 2012, if not sooner:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/nhl-free-agency-canucks-gillis-luongo-no-rush-to-trade/
Schneider displaced Luongo as Vancouver?s starting goaltender in the first round of the playoffs as the Canucks were eliminated by the Los Angeles Kings. After the season ended, Luongo said he would accepted a trade if the team asked him to waive his no-movement clause.
"With respect to the possibility of trading Roberto, we?re going to take our time," Gillis said Friday at Rogers Arena. "We?re going to make sure we do the right thing for this organization."
...
If a Luongo trade does come to pass, farmhand Eddie Lack will get a chance to make the Canucks in training camp.
"Eddie Lack is ready to compete for a spot, and we?re going to give him that opportunity," said Gillis.
The GM will also explore the possibility of acquiring a veteran NHL backup.
"Now, we have all of our options ahead of us, and we?ll flush them all out," said Gillis, who expects the trade market to heat up in August.
3. NHL CBA News Roundup ? June 24, 2012.
http://spectorshockey.net/blog/nhl-cba-news-roundup-june-24-2012/
By July, 2012, the NHL had proposed a 22% rollback of salaries so league GMs knew the league was headed towards reducing the cap. The NHL had been making noises about it for some time before that and would brief the GMs at the BoG meetings. The NHLPA would never have signed the deal they did to rollback the cap if the NHL didn't have the numbers to back up their request. The NHLPA audit the numbers as they come in each year so the NHLPA knew of the likely cap rollback as well - long before the lockout.
4. The league reviewed the Luongo deal twice:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/luongo-review/
so Gillis knew full well how close to the edge he had come with that deal and that the NHL wasn't happy with it. And he'd also have advance notice of the league's intention to legislate such a deal out with the new CBA and make them punitive.
5. At the time the Luongo chatter started up, when you looked around the league, there were a number of teams that fell into two groups:
a) those with decent goalies like Lundqvist, Rinnie, Price, Fleury, etc who had pretty good goalies and were committed contractually - didn't need to entertain Luongo
b) those small market teams who couldn't afford to take on Luongo's contract
And if Gillis doubted that, GMs talk to each other all the time. Gillis would only have to make considerably less than 29 phone calls to confirm how daunting it would be to move Luongo's contract. Failing that, the media was all over it incessantly. And if Gillis still didn't get it, the NHL 2013 quote of the year at the trade deadline by Luongo ?My contract sucks.? should have hammered home the message.
They just tried to get Ballard taken through regular waivers to avoid a buyout - a true Hail Mary. It's notable they didn't attempt something similar with Luongo ... because they knew like the rest of us that he'd clear.
6. If he was doing his job, he had to know a lot sooner than this past week that a compliance buyout for Luongo was not an option the Canucks ownership would fund.
Gillis was in denial,
an idiot, incompetent, trying to cover up his mismanaged mess in the media from ownership or something along those lines. And he made matters worse by leaving it too long, panicking and failing to get full trade value in return for possibly the best talent he had on his roster. I don't understand why they still employ him.
