The Hockey PDOcast - How the Rising Salary Cap and New CBA and Will Affect Future Transactions, and the Teams That Stand To Benefit Most From It

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Steve Werier to talk about ways in which the rising cap and new CBA on the horizon will affect future transactions around the league, how those new dynamics will influence teams considering rebuilding, some of the future deadlines on the calendar that could force real player movement, and the teams that stand to benefit most from all of these changes. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P-D-O-Cast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey-Pedio-Cast. My name is Dmitra Filipovich, and joining me to close out the week, my good buddy, Steve Ware here. Steve, what's going on? Hey, Dimitri, what's up? I'm excited for this one. It's been a while since you and I, I've had a chance to catch up on here. And I feel like in particular, with all the changing business dynamics, we've seen influencing player movement we either have or haven't seen since the start of last off season, really, with the cap going up, the new CBA on the horizon, I thought it'd be useful for us to dig into some of the most actionable and pertinent elements of it all and kind of the considerations currently ongoing behind the scenes in NHL front offices. And to start the conversation, we're going to dig into the PDO cast Discord mailback because we've got a couple of fun questions that I think are great launching points for us. And they kind of go hand in hand. But the first one is, what do you think is or will bog down trades more moving forward?

The rising cap, keeping more teams in the buying conversation or the amount of non-star players with considerable trade protection. And the second line it goes, if trade protection was a value add when the cap was flat, will the volume of them go down moving forward now that the cap is going up? or does everyone just expect it at this point? A lot to unpack there. I'll give you the floor here. What do you think is the most interesting part of that? And where do you think we should start today's conversation? Sure.

Let's take those questions in reverse. Number one, I think the horses sort of left the stable, so to speak, on trade protection, at least for now. Like, you know, it's a copycat league. There's been a major consolidation among a handful of major agencies. And so the tendency will be for, like, the next deal to look. like the last deal, so to speak. And as trade protection has sort of evolved from something, a few get to something,

you know, that many players get, I think it's going to continue to be more prevalent-ish. Teams are going to, I don't think, you know, managers having been in that role, are going to say, okay, the cap has gone up. Let's just give a little more money in lieu of trade protection. They're going to want to use that cap space to, you know, go bigger game hunting. And obviously that cap space gets used up quickly, as we've seen. seen in the last few months as, you know, teams have walked up their sort of bridge or or second contract type type guys to big long-term deals and the market sort of reset.

So it's a good question. And like, we should see more of that. We should see more reluctancy on the part of managers to give out trade protection, especially to like non-absolute core pieces. And we've seen it sort of be diluted lately where, you know, teams came into trouble with, you know, it's one thing to sign a bad contract is another. one to sign when that becomes very hard to trade. And sometimes without the liquidity of a biote or anything else is going to lead

to some, you know, tough situations, so to speak. So yeah, that's how I'd sort of address the first one. The second one about like what we see the trade market slow down or dry up. I don't think so. You know, there's always, there's a few things to play here. Like one, if a player is in a sort of worse off situation, then they may have envisioned at the start of the deal. You sometimes get to the spots where players wave those conditions to go to the right place.

There's still that opportunity, so to speak. There's also, you know, a big divergence between a full no move and giving a player maybe a five or ten team trade list of, you know, places they can say, hey, I don't want to go here, but I can go to the other 20 or 22. And obviously with expansion on the horizon, that just leaves even more teams. on those types of the list that you can have players move to. So there's always some wiggle room. There's always like the divergence of interest as well.

Like, you know, point well taken that right now we have the standing super tight and a lot more teams than maybe historically in the mix, whether they should be or shouldn't be or will be in February is another point. But, you know, more teams may be hanging on for now. But still, you know, among those teams, there's going to be some that, you know, will be aggressive to win now. There'll be some that say, hey, let's sell high on some pieces that aren't maybe essential to where we're trying to go.

And I think we'll see some moves and we'll probably get into more how the new rules around the cap in the playoffs and around double retention and all that stuff might impact the market over the next few weeks and months. But yeah, sort of how I see things going. Yeah, on the note of no trade clauses

because I think there's a lot of interesting moving parts to that. We've certainly historically, at least like when it first originated, I think back to maybe a bias just because that was kind of my starting in this industry a year locally in Vancouver, especially around that time in the early 2010s.

I remember that was a big topic of discussion with the Mike Gillis years here with the Canucks in terms of how the organization wielded no trade clauses or no move clauses as a bargaining chip in negotiations to trim some of the AV off the top to make the numbers work in an attempt to keep a loaded competitive team together at the time and then gave out trade protection to all their veteran players to facilitate that. And I think you can certainly quibble with how it turned out. It was later used as an excuse for the organization, for why they were unable to either recoup value for those players or maintain flexibility when trying to rebuild properly with new regimes. But at the time, the players in question were highly productive. And they were core players for a team that came very close to winning the cup. And so those contracts netted out at far below market value, what those players are worth. the time, especially for a cap situation where I think it was like in the low 60s at the time. When you compare it to this year's Canucks, for example, and they're fresh on the mind because

we had these reports last week come out from Elliott Friedman that they're certainly active in looking to sell on the trade market and understandably so, considering their 32nd and points percentage now, you go through their list of players that would potentially be intriguing to other buyers or what that could look like and pretty much everyone across the board except for i guess connor garland whose contract once the extension he's already signed kicks in on july first will have a no move clause as part of that he's the only guy out of all the guy everyone else whether it's lankan and ronick marcus peterson tyler meyers drew o'connor teddy bluger de brusk vander kane all these guys have some form of either trade lists or full no move clauses for the next couple years and

how that sort of complicates things. So I do think it's interesting to sort of compare the dynamics of how we started with no trade clauses and who was getting them versus the point where we are now, which is what the question I think was hitting at, where it seems like the toothpaste is out of the tube in a way where pretty much everyone is getting them, at least in some capacity, with whatever deal they sign. Yeah, I think that's all fair. And like taking 10 steps, you know, 10 steps back from this all, you know, how do teams get

into trouble, like into trouble a few different ways. And the first one is signing the wrong players. The next one is signing the wrong players to the wrong contract structures. And then the third one is signed the wrong players, the wrong contract structures with the wrong trade protections. And, you know, I think some of the teams you've mentioned in players you've mentioned might be a

combination of more than one of those variables. So there's a lot of reasons why a team might find themselves in a tough situation with those assets. And, you know, Unless it's sort of, that's your one mulligan on the round, and you've got these other young, cost-controlled, great players and arsenal prospects and draftics that you can use to sort of couple with those assets and ship them out, you're going to find yourself sort of stuck in the mud

when trying to move guys like that, especially when, you know, everyone in the league might be looking at you and know when you're in a bit of a bind. Well, here's the most interesting part of this for me, in terms of the buying conversation point that the question framed. Last summer, we spoke about this a lot of the time and have moving forward, last summer we saw players that I think were previously treated or viewed as negative value assets that would have had to essentially be pure salary dumps, suddenly became reoriented and framed as positive value assets that actually provided a return when they were moved.

And that was because the cap went up. everyone had space all of a sudden, everyone wanted to add to improve their team because that's what happens every offseason where everyone talks themselves into being competitive for a new season with a clean slate. And no one other than really, I guess, the stars for the most part of the time felt a real need or urgency to actually clear meaningful money at the time. So you had this massive imbalance in terms of players available versus desire to add. And so I'm curious for your take on whether you view that as a bit of a one-off. terms of a transition year where teams are still trying to kind of wrap their heads around and

figure out how this is going to work, or whether it's going to be a phenomenon of concept we see to an even greater degree moving forward in terms of how some of these, I guess, players who have money attached to them are going to be viewed on the trade market in terms of being capped dumps versus actually ones that the return positive value and whether they're even available in the first place. Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you how I hope it shakes out. I hope teams, you know, looking at some recent teams that have gone far in the playoffs and had success, realize that you can, like, you can just do things. So even if the cap's going up, like, the ambitious way to look at is, you know, how many superstars can we add to our team?

Like, can we transform our entire sort of roster and outlook overnight? And, you know, you've seen that with, you know, Vegas and Florida and maybe Dallas at some extent to mind of teams who have been hyper aggressive and said, like, you know what, let's trade. our top prospect and top draft picks and go big game hunting even though we have a bunch of high, high, you know, big ticket players on our roster and put together

a competitive championship roster with, you know, almost not too many homegrown draft picks, so to speak, but just by it being really aggressive on the trade market and free agency and everywhere and taking advantage of every dollar of cap space to do really big things. I think we'll see,

again, you know, being a copy cat league, we'll see more teams maybe thinking about that approach and you have to wonder like, you know, at what point in the revolution does a team like Chicago or San Jose who are anchored in a good way by these generational, you know, transformative talents say, you know what, we want to, we sort of want to be where Pittsburgh was where, you know, we had Malcolm and Crosby in their real early years, you know,

on a championship roster as opposed to saying, hey, let's, let's build five more years of first round picks and have a, you know, homegrown group that can maybe run with things. I think we're going to see some teams, you know, take a seat back and or step back and say, you know, what, we can turbocharge this rebuild or retoolist, I like to call it, and get to a good place quicker. So, yeah, it can be interesting. Well, that was my next question. How do you think this paradigm shift in terms of talent acquisition and retention affects the viability, I guess, or willingness for organizations to truly rebuild in kind of that, you know, know, hopefully three to five year window as opposed to a seven to ten year one in terms of

turning over the roster, probably needing to gut it for the most part and start from scratch and then building it back up. Do you feel like this current dynamic we're seeing with the cap going up with player movement, I guess more difficult to come by pushing teams that are already kind of 50-50 or on the edge in that direction? Or do you think it makes it less palatable because you're just looking at the talent gap and being like, man, all these good teams already have all their players signed. It's going to be so much more difficult to catch up to them in the first place. Do we really want to go through that? Or do you think it doesn't matter? What do you think like teams that are sort of in that middle ground right now are viewing this like?

I think it's case by case, like for Chicago or San Jose, it's one thing. You know, for a team like Vancouver, I think if you're Vancouver right now without that, you know, next 10, year, you know, first-line superstar, 20-year-old, like a potter or sell, Reading, locked in. You know, you might have those internal conversations while you say, okay, we have Quinn Hughes at, you know, odds on maybe one to two years max. On our roster, what's the best way right now to grab the next, you know, Quinn Hughes and build from there? And the answer to that is probably, you know, grabbing a Keaton Beerhoff and starting from there

and saying, okay, let's monetize that asset now. Let's put us in the best position to get a franchise defenseman, which we can only do really if we have the first or second overall picking the draft because we're not going to be trading an expiring asset for an equivalent player, which is really only a, you know, a McCar or a Werensky, but you're also not trading a, you know, player on a contract like that for number one defensemen, like even a, you know, a Josh Morrissey type, just given the contractual status. And I think teams are going to look at that and say, you know, if you're in those shoes, you are on a longer path to, uh, to rebuild to putting yourself, you know, on par with today's San Jose and today's Chicago. And listen, you know, everyone can always say, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, do you really want to tear it down? What happens if we end up, you know, like a team that tore things down and rebuilt slowly? And there's lots of examples of that. And there's examples of teams that have had the benefit and the burden of having that first overall pick or started a rebuild at the wrong time.

And you look at Edmonton, who one year they, you know, had first overall and end up with I will Jakopov and another year they ended up with Conn McDavid. But I think that's the simple answer. You have to take your medicine if you're not already holding a few aces. So, you know, if you're Chicago or in San Jose or an Anaheim, you're, you know, you've got a few sort of centerpieces to build around and you can turbocharge things if you're a team like Vancouver, who, you know, you've got your number one sort of valuable asset that's going out the door and those other players that you mentioned that put you in

a bit of a bind. it's going to be a longer path and I think the only way to speed that up is to start the tear down as soon as possible and then be really innovative and progressive and ambitious in building up your prospect pipeline, player pipeline, you know, asset management in a way that gets you in an exciting spot in the next, you know, maybe two or three years, if not, you know, having a bit of a longer runway until you're really in your championship window again. Yeah, I feel like my thinking on this has come around because I think initially after what we saw this past off season, my first blushed out, I was like, man, I feel like there's going to be

fewer opportunities for some of these bad teams to weaponize their biggest asset, which is cap space in the previous cap system. And so those buying opportunities in terms of taking on bad contracts, acquiring assets along the way are going to be harder to come by. And that was a big selling point for enterprising organizations than you. They were going to be bad. But now the more that I thought about it, I feel like the value of draft picks has gone up. even further if we're kind of viewing it through the prism of if you get a good player, you're going to be so much more likely, at least for the time being, maybe the new CBA is going to change this, but for the time being, retain that player and keep them for the entirety of his prime

than you were previously. And so getting that homegrown talent developing it and then being able to retain it for the full extent of its prime is going to be that much more important, not to mention the fact that with the standing so tight right now, for example, there's so few active sellers. And so positioning yourself a bit differently than other organizations and taking on that role would theoretically fetch you an even bigger return than it would have previously. And so I feel like if anything right now with what's going on in the league, it would push a team that was kind of on the edge already to begin with further in that direction. And I feel like my thinking on that has changed. The more I've thought about it and the more times gone on since

June, July, whenever this first started. Yeah, I think that's all fair. And like the way think about it honestly, like just a simple mental model is, you know, it's a game of extreme. So you either want to be doing everything one way to, you know, be passive harvesting, getting traffic, getting prospects, building things up, where you want to be the other extreme of saying we're competing for a cup right now and we're sort of cashing in all those chips to go all the way. And it's pretty obvious for a lot of these teams we've talked about and think about that are clearly much closer to one extreme than the other to, you know, get working as soon as possible and pick up those pieces.

And to your point about being opportunistic and finding those sort of windows to pounce, you know, I think there's going to be more of those or different ones as the CBAs changed, as the rules have changed, as things evolve. And we'll see that maybe this year alone, again, with some of these new rules

around, you know, game-by-game playoff rosters, which might have some really negative externality, so to speak, where you might find teams saying, you know what, we can really load up differently at the deadline because we can plan to maybe scratch an expensive player during the playoffs and have some cap benefits to manage our roster that way and things like that or other teams who say, okay, we can't do a double retention trade to grab a player

like we might have for this year's playoffs. We need to be more creative with how we maybe move off assets to other teams ahead of the deadline or things like that. You know, there's always new opportunities that pop up and you just want to be at the forefront of those if you're one of those teams that's looking to, you know, add chips as opposed to add players. well in terms of those opportunities there's a couple that come to to mind right away moving forward whether it's the lightning the hurricanes the panthers i'd include the habs there even though

they're obviously at a bit of different spot in terms of the success they've had previously but just along the same lines of a team that's already signed pretty much the full extent of their core players under the previous financial landscape now all of a sudden with the cap going up having a real surplus of money to to add to their existing team during this competition competitive window as opposed to what a team like the Stars has had to do with first the Harley extension and then the presumed Jason Robertson one down the line as well in terms of having to all right you have more cap space but you're going to have to allocate a good chunk of that just to retaining the guys you already have because they become more expensive if you're one of those teams in the

first camp how do you at least right now view the best way to sort of leverage that in terms of having this money to spend being good already but maybe as I said previously the true star players kind of being tougher to shake loose at the moment, especially with so little talent available this summer on the UFA market, and having to go the trade route

essentially with teams being less incentivized, obviously in a case-by-case basis, but for the most part in general, to actually sell at this point. Yeah, I think you brought up some interesting examples. Montreal is maybe the best one that comes to mind with a team like on the up and up

as opposed to Pima's sort of been at that plateau for a little bit like a Tampa. You know, you rightly point out Montreal's locked up their core pieces long-term on all, you know, cap-friendly market deals. And, you know, I remember back in Florida when we were looking at and we sort of wrapped up, walking up our core at that time, which were Barcob, Hubert O'Eck, Vlad, Riley Smith, and Vincent Trocheck. And we had our, you know, our cap table in front of us on the whiteboard or whatever. And the conversation that we really wanted to pivot.

it to was not okay can we build out our team on the cap so that these players are at the top and we can surround them with you know complementary pieces within a rising cap before we did those contracts what we really aim for was to say if we get way in front of things and we lock up these core players who we identify a they actually are what we think they are and b we sign them to deals that will age really well then will we put ourselves in a position where the guys who we are signing as first line forwards and first trained defensemen will actually age cap-wise that we'll be able to surround them, so to speak, where they're basically become second-line players, not necessarily like, you know, talent-wise, but meaning we can

surround them with three other forwards who make more and two other defensemen who are higher paid because we've locked these players up so proactively at deals that makes sense so much for us right now that as the cap goes up, we will be able to surround them with like equally talented players by leveraging the rising caps and the rising space. And I think that's probably the mindset that like a Jeff Gordon has right now in Montreal is that when you've locked up your Suzuki, Slavkovsky, you know, Coffield, Lane Hudson, you can really pivot in your outlook rather than saying, okay, we can now surround them with third line players for three or four million dollars

because we have more space to saying, you know what, these guys are locked in. the cap's going up by $10 and $20 million in the next four or five years, we can add two more, you know, first-line players, even if those guys end up costing us, you know, eight or $10 or $12 million because we've been so proactive. And then we can really put ourselves in an exciting spot with a roster we never, you know, otherwise would have been able to put together at that time.

So it'll be interesting to see, you know, how those teams evolve. And you can only do that by being like super efficient down market, which is something Tampa's done, right? Like Tampa has been very active, Julian, the last few years, at the deadline in targeting, you know, a player like Kiefer Sherwood, where, you know, a talented player, but also a player on an exceptionally cap-friendly deal. And going out and sign those guys and, you know, the market often, or at least not the market, but, you know, public perception of a number of those deals at the time has been, oh, you know, they went and acquired, you know, player X on a $2 million salary. he was a third liner for a first round pick. What an overpay? And it's like, no, it's not an overpay

because the cap savings there are, you know, massive for Tampa. And, you know, the opportunity, you know, their, their next option with that amount of cap space is a vastly inferior player. So, you know, Sneep Montreal is in sort of the opposite spot where they'll have lots of space to make,

big moves and to your point, you know, how will they do that if other teams lock up their players quickly and long-term with trade protection? The answer is it's harder, but there's always inefficiencies and players out there and, you know, buy low candidates and everything else. Yeah, it's interesting the lightning example because I think at the time

and you can go back to listen to shows in the archives, I was quite high on first, I think it was the Blake Coleman acquisition and what they paid and then the Brent Hagle one certainly as well. And then they got their hand caught in the cookie jar a little bit with the 10 or Geno one and I think

it was the same process. They just missed on the talent evaluation there and obviously it didn't wind up working for them, but the actual sort of logic, I guess, was pretty consistent throughout. All right, Steve, before we keep it going, let's actually take a quick little break here. And then when we come back, we will jump right back into it. You're listening to the HockeyPedocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. We're back here on the HockeyPedocatz, joined today by Steve Warrior.

And Steve, before we went to break, we were highlighting some teams that are either position nicely to strike wild irons hot and really build this thing out and improve their rosters as the circumstances around them change one of the teams that we haven't gone to yet but i've been really interested in uh for a variety of reasons has been the new jersey devils and it's because they're in this spot now where you know especially at full health when jack use comes back the first whatever 20 games we saw that team they're clearly one of the probably the second best team in the metro one of the top three or four teams in the east outright that conference is wide open for them this year to really be competitive and make a push for it and they've got a massive competitive edge in terms of

two of the most difficult things I think defined from a team building perspective one it's having their top two centers and jack hughes and eco hissier locked up for a combined 15.25 million for the next couple years and two having a bunch of cost controlled right shot defensemen at their disposal and now it's a bit of a different dynamic because they've had a lot of injuries on the blue line, but eventually at some point this year, they're going to have a log jam and I'm going to have to figure that out with who's going to play and who's not. And so they're at this crossroads right now where people like myself would certainly like to see them leverage those assets they have and not take this window for granted in terms of competing

this season. But I think they're also trying to be pretty pragmatic or maintaining the long view of scaling this thing out for not just one or two years, but many years down the line with this core they have of young players and a guy like Quinn Hughes obviously with a connection there with the two players they have in his brother's already in place, either becoming available via trade in the next year and a half or hitting the open market in the summer of 2027 and maintaining flexibility financially to build their roster around that. So all those things in mind, if you were them, kind of how would you be approaching this situation in terms of trying to have your cake and eat at two of competing now, but also maintaining the long of you and building this thing

out the right way. Yeah. I mean, I think the other huge thing for them, right, is, uh, Jack's, what, 23, he sure's I think 27, you know, Duke, Jack, Nico, uh, yes per Brad. All your core guys are also in their prime years. So it's not, you know, unrealistic. Um, knock on what health wise to have that core in place, you know, for another decade or so, um, which is all to say, you know, they aren't under the gun to, to win right now in

terms of we don't, if we don't win this year, we're, uh, you know, we don't know when we'll be back in the spot. I think it's reasonable to think that core will be competing for a long time. And so when you're looking at the opportunity to acquire, you know, a guy like Quinn Hughes, who's, you know, generational talent. And, you know, I think we all know that New Jersey will have an excellent idea about their probability of acquiring Quinn, um, either as a free agent or before. Um, you know, so planning and keeping that door open for the next couple years, it's the prudent thing to do. There's no other player who you go out, um, and acquire. or, you know, other than maybe Kiel McCar, where you say, okay, you know, we sort of threw in all our chips and, you know, mortgaged our cap space and close the door on Quinn.

I don't think you could do that strategically. And I don't think you do that politically with his two brothers in the room, depending on where things stand. So, yeah, making sure you're well positioned to fit him in and compete with him on the roster is the right move and the non-controversial move. I think another thing about not New Jersey in particular, but New Jersey among other teams, that is going to be interesting is what some of these clubs do come playoff time this year where playoff rosters will be set on a game-by-game basis. And what that means is teams can choose,

if they so elect you, to scratch roster players, and by doing so alleviate those players. entire cap hits for those playoff games. And that situation can come to mind or come into play. You know, if a team makes deadline moves and uses up, you know, in-season cap space or maybe takes advantage of players who are injured during the season that might come back in the playoffs, but add some pieces such that if those pieces were put on the day one

playoff roster with the fully healthy roster, that team might be over the cap. And if so, those teams are going to be in situations where they might be. might have to scratch, you know, veteran players whose cap hit exceeds their likely market value, you know, right now in 2026, in order, ice the most competitive roster and sort of make a veteran player at Black Ace. And I don't know if, you know, that's something the PA really thought long and hard about in making these new playoff rules. I know everyone was really worried about the improprieties of, you know, whether real or imagined about players being put on IR and returning for the playoffs and the team's cap had allowed to sort of balloon from

deadline ads at the time. And that's right to consider because, again, whether it was really happening or perceived to be happening, you don't want that, you know, perception of impropriety that teams are gaining an unfair advantage to be either. But, you know, if the cost of that was for really respected veteran players, maybe some who haven't wanted to cap before, even those who have, to sort of be stigmatized come playoff time and be scratched in order for a better roster to be put together. That's going to be something that will probably resonate pretty widely. And that's not to pick on New Jersey at all. It's going to be an issue for I think almost every playoff-bound team, depending on how they manage things heading into the playoffs. But just

sort of something to flag on the radar for the next few months. Yeah. I mean, that's a fascinating consideration. You and I were discussing this before we went on the air in terms of topics to go through today and something you had brought it up was the idea of a team potentially wielding this strategically in terms of the goalies they use and especially for ones that might have an imbalance in terms of having one younger cheap goalie with a low cap hit because of where they're out in their career and then an higher priced veteran and the idea of trying to finagle that playoff cap situation by essentially scratching the veteran goalie just relying on the fact that their cheaper one is going to stay healthy and then having a backup in place that's

also cheap as well and kind of trying to get around it that way another example would be some of these teams that have older maybe less productive at this point veterans that are have massive cap hits but are necessarily worthy of that at this point of their career it's just going to lead to a lot of fascinating conversations internally I think and difficult ones for teams in terms of the politics in the room of what the perception of that is going to be, but also how that's going to be received by the rest of the team, especially if it's a popular player in terms of essentially not allowing them to dress for a playoff game, especially an important one at that and kind of what the trickle down of that would

be. So maybe it's a conversation for another day, but I do feel like there are some potential loopholes that are going to be exploitable and teams are going to be pretty savvy about doing so that the PA didn't really consider or the league didn't consider at the time of the inclusion of these rules. Yeah, I think that's right. And again, I think the league and the PA agree that they'll revisit these rules on a pretty quick basis. So they may have to adjust on the fly if sort of some of those contingencies pop up.

So in terms of deadlines, there are a couple that come to mind for me in terms of being actionable that might spur movement. and give us all we're looking for, which is transactions and stuff actually happening that's noteworthy. And one of them, the most, I guess, timely one is the idea of this 75-day buffer period for the double retention mechanism that we've seen facilitate a lot of trades in previous deadlines, and that would come up around December 29th or 30th, I believe, this year ahead of the trade deadline. And then the other is, in the summer, the window from July 1st to September 16th to structure extensions under the current terms before the new CBA kicks in, including upfront money, signing bonuses, the eighth year, in particular for veteran players, which is

going to be incredibly desirable. You can take those one at a time if you want, but which one intrigues you the most in terms of actually being a viable path for giving us more action and really spurring a lot of stuff to happen that might otherwise not have. I think the second one's massive and obvious and apparent to everyone. And the first one is when you have to get really creative to think of anything unexpected with it. So let's start the second one. Like you said, there's major changes after September 16th that come into play. You know, player contracts can be a maximum of only six years for a UFA or seven if it's a team that had your rights as of the prior trade deadline.

signing bonuses can only be, I believe, no greater than 60% of the total amount of the contract. There's also restrictions in place for variations, so year-to-year amounts, both across the deal and for immediately adjacent years. And all those things are super important. Obviously, the ones about the amount of contract term is easy to recognize, but the rules about variation and bonuses come into play when you talk about, you know, bioproofing a contract, making deals more tradable, you know, things like that. You know, my own view is you want more liquidity in the market.

You want players to be able to, you know, move around and seek better opportunities when they can. And you want teams to be able to make, you know, deals as easily as possible, both for excitement, but also to really adapt to, you know, be more competitive when they need to be. And maybe vice versa as well. So I don't love those restrictions. I understand why they're being put in place, but I think we've already seen sort of the long range planning that's happened with that on the horizon with all these huge second contracts and even veteran extensions that have come into place in advance of those rules. And I certainly think we'll see more of those deals signed ahead of that window closing. it'll be fascinated to see how the game of chicken gets played between teams and agents.

As those windows get close to wrapping up, where teams say, okay, you know, if you really don't think you want that last year or you want this type of contract, well, we're now this many hours before it's gone for good and what kind of trades we'll see where, you know, we've seen them before with Matt Kachukk and otherwise, we'll see, you know, sign trade so that players can take advantage of those terms but also end up in the destination they want to end up in. So, you know, that's something I think everyone knows is. coming and it's already been happening the uh the 75 day window one is like it's hard to wiggle

around and just to make clear to your audience like that goes to double retention so historically let's just use california as an example if um la has a player and anaheim's either out of the playoffs or even you know a playoff bound team but with tons of caps face that they don't need all of it and san Jose is a playoff bound team that wants that that player um or whatever, a few teams, teams, one, two, and three. I'm losing track of what team I use first. But a team can row a player through another team, retaining half of the players cap it so that the destination club gets that cap hit cut in four.

So a $4 million player gets traded on paper to another team where the original team retains half, making him a $2 million player. The second team then retains half, sends them to the destination club, and you end up with a $1 million player. But really, that $1 million player is way less than that, cap-hit-wise, if they're acquired at the deadline, because there's only a percentage of the season remaining. Taking a step back, all of that sort of more detail than you need, those deals aren't allowed anymore.

And what that means now is in order to do a retained salary transaction, followed by another one, there need to be 75 lead days in between. So I think you said that sort of deadline where a deal would have to be made for a retained transaction and another one to happen at the deadline, the trade deadline is what, like December 29th? I'll take your word on that. I think December 30th, yeah. So December 30th. So what that means is you're not going to be able to do those deals at the deadline because just simple calendar math, there's got to be 75 days between those two transactions and you can't make that work. The question is, will you see any deals done December 28th or earlier where even if the

like the total intent isn't to set up a retained salary transaction followed by another one. It might be a consideration. And what I mean by that, I'm sort of spitballing here, is, you know, everyone talks about the standings being so tight this year. So suppose your team who wasn't expecting to be in the playoff hind, and maybe internally you're thinking, you know, we've won some games, but the way we're playing maybe isn't predictive of how we're going to play all. year we're getting bounces or, you know, whatever, hockey, well, attending everyone can think of examples. You know, does a team in that position say, let's try to hedge a little bit and acquire a player and make the team trading him to us, eat half the salary and maybe pay a little bit

more in terms of the draft pick or another player going the other way? Because if we get to the deadline and we aren't playoff bound, we can flip that player again to a playoff bound club and really monetize them there because let's, you know, pretend it's say, $6 million UFA, well, if we can get him for three, and then on March 15th, we're out of the playoff picture. So now we can flip him to another team, and he's only 1.5. You know, how does that help us? Is that worth making that first deal a little more palatable?

And there's some negative impacts, again, from the new CBA changes to the ultimate acquirer on how when they acquire that player following the double retention, they actually you need to take that player without any proration when taking into account their cap considerations, including during the playoffs when making their playoff roster. So there's some stuff there that comes into play. But that's one. And really the only other, like, creative thing I could think of would be, you know, if there's an injured player who, you know, not a Sasha Barcov, but an expiring contract again,

type of veteran who like realistically is actually going to be injured for most of the season, but come back for the playoffs, you know, and they're on a non-playoff team. Does someone say to them, hey, listen, we're going to trade you, you know, to this intermediary team. We know you're not going to play any games for them because you're out until mid-April, but this will allow them to do a double retention deal to another club in a couple months, wink, wink, nudge, and so that come playoff time again with these playoff roster considerations, you will be able to be on a playoff team and fit on their roster.

and their cap, but in order to do that, we need to, you know, flip you now for a few months so that you're, you know, on another team's roster for a double retention deal. Again, sort of grasping as straws, that's a pretty ironclad rule, but it would be really fun to see something that we may need to wait until the deadline to be like, oh, in hindsight, that's what was going on. That'll be fun to see someone sort of maneuver around that one. It sounds like you just threw up the bad signal for our pal, Caldubus, because in hearing you talk about that, they're the team that jumped.

to the front of the line for me because obviously I think they're sitting at fifth in the league right now in point percentage now with the state of the metro we mentioned the devils earlier they were i think first in the indivision at the start of the week and then they had three straight regulation losses and now they're sitting in the second wildcard spot so this is all changing and very fluid on a day by day basis but right now they're competing certainly it's a great story i think they're enjoying you watch that game on thursday in tampa bay and they got outplayed by the lightning they're clearly not as good as them but they wind up scratching out a victory there and you see just love seeing the the juice from a guy like i'vegeny malkin at this point is scoring the game winner and the celebration after and what it means to those guys and comparing it to the situation they were in the past couple seasons when things seem so dire and so they're a team that has a bunch of cap space has a ton of draft capital especially in the second and third round after the past year or so in terms of all the extra picks they've accumulated, and so it would be able to facilitate a lot of arbitrage opportunities, I think, as you described it, in terms of buying assets now and potentially selling them

for more later if the bottom falls out, as we expect it might, based on our preseason expectations, but also maintaining the runway for this continuing for the rest of the regular season, and all of a sudden, you make the playoffs, and it's a cool story, and that probably means more for you in the grand scheme of things than an extra second or third round pick here they're there when you have as many extra assets as they already have banked so far. 100%. And I'd add to Kyle, like I think Eric Tulski ran a bit of a high stakes arbitrage last year leading up the deadline with a certain player.

So listen, there's teams willing to, what's the word phrase when you have time to use it. Someone could do it. And if they do, you know, I'll applaud because, you know, rules are made to be leveraged, however you can leverage them to help your club. I think those examples in terms of like entering it pretty earnestly or transparently in terms of we're going to see how the next 75 days go in terms of both the fit for the player but also our team's outlook and we're keeping the possibility open for revisiting and I feel like that would kind of fly. I think it will become a trickier one in terms of selling especially veteran players on like this pure rental 75 day period where it's like you're going to come to a different city. potentially move your family or just be completely displaced from them and just kind of play it out here for a little bit and then we're going to send you to a contender eventually I feel like

that extra link might be a bit less palatable but hopefully we actually do see this act as if not this year in future ones as like a second mini trade headline because I think the the regular season being broken up that way would certainly be beneficial for all of us I think the the other one that you spoke about off the top about the window from July 1st December 16th I think that that is, as you illustrated, a massive one. I think from a leverage perspective as well, how that shakes out will be so fascinating because everyone has been so preoccupied the past couple of years, focusing on the state tax perks that teams like the Golden Knights and Panthers and Lightning have benefited from and enjoyed with the contracts they signed. And we've

been speaking a lot about how probably a more pertinent part of the equation is that those teams leveraging their financial might in terms of the structuring they're able to do right now with signing bonuses essentially accounting for the entirety of the deal, $1 million base salary throughout a lot of money up front, all this sort of stuff making it such a no-brainer for the players who are taking a bit less off the A.A.V. And so that's going to be an entirely different dynamic and how that affects stuff, I think.

I'm very curious to see how it plays out. I mean, I don't want to keep coming back to the Quinn Hughes thing, but he's probably the most notable example because of the dilemma, other team he's currently in is facing with where they're at in the standings, their future outlook, the idea that he might want to play elsewhere, and the fact that this actually does give them a bit more leverage than it would otherwise, where I think we'd be viewing this as like a total ticking time bomb in terms of, all right, you got to do something because each day that passes, you have less leverage. For them, that window of being able to offer

that eighth year with those previous terms is going to provide a new found cushion, I think, that'll be interesting to see how that plays out and whether they explore that. and benefit from it down the road. I think you're probably right, but you're not totally certainly right on that one when you look at Quinn. It depends on what guys think. Like, there's an argument to be made that,

and let's set aside the part about like signing bonuses all up front is something players would rather have than not have and that changing is a big deal. And that is something that players won't be able to optimize for and will come into play. So we're right about that in terms of wanting to sign ahead of that. but in terms of just, you know, term length, there is maybe like a different calculus that some players will, you know, will use. And I wouldn't count McDavid as one. But like, if you're a Quinn

Hughes, you can go for the eight years when you're, let's say, you're 27. That means you're going to be coming up for your next deal at 35 if you do an eight year deal. And Quinn Hughes may not be the best example here because it's not unreasonable to say, okay, at 35 Quinn Hughes might be able to get a top of league, you know, eight year, seven year extension at that time just because of who he is. But like for a lot of high end, maybe not like the absolute top to top players, they might actually be able to maximize their future earnings by going mid then long, meaning let me set me myself up for my next contract when I'm 32, 33, as opposed to 35, 36, so that I can go, you know, five plus seven or five plus eight,

as opposed to signing one eight year deal and then maybe sort of being out of the game for a high AV contract just because of ageing curves and everything else. So I think there is some opportunities for like players who think intelligently and think long term to not be too scared away by the changing dynamics of sort of an eight year max to becoming a seven year max and all that. But certainly if you can have your cake and eat it too, you want that, you know, signing bonus heavy, front-loaded deal structure in any market. And as you rightly point out, you know, teams in certain markets have been leveraging that

to the full extent. And then you've seen some other teams most recently, you know, Winnipeg with Kyle Connor, who have taken principal approaches and said, hey, you know what, we're not doing bonus late and heavy deals. I'm walking that back just because of, you know, whether that's market tendencies or just realistically understanding this is a, you know, franchise player who we're otherwise looking at realistically losing, we need to make a smart case-by-case decision here. But it'll be, yeah, it'll be neat for different players in different spots, for sure.

Well, I would have thought at the time last year that first Miko Ranton, but then certainly Mitch Martyr, and we heard some reporting at the time before he ultimately wound up being signed and traded to Vegas that he was seriously considering, if not prioritizing, going a three, four-year route and being an example of what you just said, which is getting a bunch of money now, but then also at 32, 33 years old, whatever, still being at least within close proximity of your prime, the cap being up so much that it kind of counters whatever you might have lost in terms of your productivity and earning power at that time. And also maintaining the, I guess, flexibility or malleability of a team you sign with right now, let's say Vegas

is in its competitive window, but three to four years from now as they get older and more injured been banged up. Maybe they're not in that same place anymore and you can go elsewhere and maintain your competitive window individually in a new team. And he ultimately wound up doing the traditional route of the eight-year deal while he still could. And I do think the allure of all those perks, but especially for a guy who's going to be 34, 35, 36 years old at the point that eighth year kicks in, I do think it really kind of shifts the pendulum in favor of a lot of guys. And we've seen a bunch of them do so already. So it validates that idea. opt for that route instead.

And I imagine Quinn Hughes probably would fall in line with that as well. And so TBD, but it'll certainly make for a fascinating deadline and a lot of moving parts there. Anything else that we haven't covered today from either the cap going up, the CBA, certain trends we've seen around the league, potential competitive edges. It can be something that you don't even have necessarily clarity or a firm answer on, but maybe something you're kind of flagging for a few. future conversation that interests you right now? Great question. I wish I had an equally great answer. Yeah, nothing totally pops to mind.

I think there's just a lot of teams in interesting predicaments right now, and it'll be interesting to see what they do in terms of shifting windows. I think maybe the most interesting one, if you're asking me today, I think what happens with L.A. over the next few months will be very interesting. Like, I'm always interested in not just like what should a team do, but like the, you know, the inside baseball sort of organizational behavior of like who are the players behind the scenes and what are their interests and how do they sort of sync or not line up with, you know, what the organization should objectively be doing.

And so that, you know, whether that's L.A. or Vancouver or Nashville, I think there's just a lot teams to watch right now that are fascinating. You know, Nashville, I think, had a recent ownership change. They obviously have sort of a different structure with Barry now as the GM, you know, previously coaching. You know, LA's had a change up top with Luke and now Ken Holland in charge and sort of some coaching turmoil and also a team that's, you know, got a lot of exciting pieces that maybe is underachieved and is going through a bit of a cultural, you know,

transition with Copart in his final year. So there's just so many ways. teams like that can go and to see sort of what are the outputs of you know the decision makers like what comes out of that group and how do they decide what to do and similarly Vancouver where you have you know sort of the different horizons of a team that has maybe a longer pathway to rebuild and a you know sort of a team present who's been around a long time and a team GM who's you know new to the job and might have a different time horizon and all that and seeing sort of what are the what are the decisions that come out of

sort of people in different spots working together and how that shakes over the next few months I think it'll be interesting for all those clubs? Well, the Kings certainly are interesting. I was watching them again on Thursday night as they lay another stinker at home. I think they wound up scoring one goal

against the Blackhawks and another defeat. They've scored one goal exactly in six of their last nine games in regulation. They're 30th in the league in scoring. I think only the Cracken and Flames are scoring less frequently than them. you look at the roster and it certainly should be better than the results they're turning out. And if they're dating back to the offseason, we had questions about Jim Hiller and what, you know, Ken Holland coming in would mean for the coaching position. We've heard a lot of noise recently about Pete DeBore, who's kind of lurking in the shadows after being let go from Dallas as the most intriguing potential coaching hire in season.

He will be on Bruce Cassidy's staff at the Olympics in, um, in a couple months now or a couple weeks as we approach it. And so I imagine this is going to pick up, especially if the Kings keep playing this way. But for a guy like him, I do think you're in a spot now, especially if you're being paid by your previous team where you don't want to be out of the game too long,

but I think you want to pick your spot in terms of not kind of jumping on a bit of a sinking ship, especially for one that committed a bunch of money to older, slower players this past summer, and sort of picking your spot a bit more diligently. And so I do wonder whether that's going to be, be a consideration for him. Listen, there's only 32 of these gigs. And so whenever a head coach gets an opportunity to coach a team, I think they're going to seriously consider it. But for someone

who's been as accomplished as he has, I feel like he's going to have staying power. And if I were advising, it might be like, all right, let's actually kind of map this out and think about what it's going to look like. So it's not just a, you know, a short-term gain, but long-term regret down the road. Yeah, I think those are all valid points. And like you said, there's only so many seats at the table. And that's certainly not a gig, I think, in the market. And with the young players they have, that most candidates would look at and say,

no, hard pass. I think that's probably a very, a delivering gig for a lot of good reasons. And so, yeah, we'll see where it goes. All right, buddy. Well, this was fun. That was great to catch up. always anything you want to plug on the way out i got nothing thanks for having me on pleasure as always looking forward to our chat maybe as we get closer to the trade deadline or

even afterwards we'll have a chance to uh to reconvene and talk about the most pressing issues in terms of a business perspective and a front office perspective down the line there all right my plugs uh subscribe to the pdo cast patreon if you want access to extra episodes moving forward give us a five star review wherever you listen to the show join the pdo cast discord and that is all for today i will see you back here on Sunday evening for our Sunday special with our pal, Drans. Hope everyone has a great weekend. Thank you for listening to the Hockey, Ocas streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.